


Encounters

by jeeno2



Series: Arya x Gendry Week [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arranged Marriage, AryaxGendry Week, Eventual Smut, F/M, Friendship, Gendry is a Baratheon, Gift Giving, Lyanna is alive, Minor Lyanna Stark/Rhaegar Targaryen, Rags to Riches, Romance, Sexual Content, Slow Burn, unhappily married
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-21
Updated: 2016-11-03
Packaged: 2018-02-09 20:23:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 8
Words: 22,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1996614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeeno2/pseuds/jeeno2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arya Waters' path crosses unexpectedly with Prince Gendry Baratheon's, changing them both forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The First Meeting

**Author's Note:**

> This story was inspired by Day 2 of tumblr's A x G week. The prompt was "Forbidden". This will ultimately be a multi-chaptered story.

It’s the coldest night Kings Landing has seen in over twenty-five years the first time Arya Waters meets Gendry Baratheon. 

The official start of winter won’t be declared for another two weeks if the Citadel man who came to the brothel yesterday is to be believed.  But Arya never puts much stock in what officials say about the weather.  Or about anything else.  Her toes are half frozen inside her old worn boots and her fingers are blocks of ice. 

If that doesn’t mean winter’s come _already_ , she’s some highborn Lady from a fancy House.

This isn’t the first time Arya’s seen important men here.  No; this place is a favorite of men wearing both Gold cloaks and White. Men in Maester’s collars too, sometimes.   Lord Toppance’s location – right on the very edge of King’s Landing, hidden behind the shadow cast by the city’s massive gates – is perfect for men who want to fuck a nameless girl without anyone important finding out about it. 

And Lord Toppance himself prides himself on discretion.  Or so he likes to tell his girls.

But even if Arya has seen men with the Baratheon stag on their cloaks in here more times than she can count she’s certainly never seen so many all at once.  They usually skulk in here in ones and twos, their backs and shoulders hunched forward and their heads half-hidden under their cloaks as Toppance shows them behind the red velvet curtain.  Like they know being here is something to be ashamed of.

Tonight, though, Arya has a crowd of Baratheon men to feed.  She doesn’t know her numbers too well – Magda, the yellow-haired girl who used to teach her things, died two seasons ago from grayscale -- but she counts the men as best she can.  She guesses there are over a dozen.  Tonight she has to work harder than she can ever remember working, scuttling back and forth between table and kitchen to supply the waiting men with enough food and drink to keep them happy. 

Arya learned years ago that it’s important to keep men happy while they wait.  It’s hard enough to prevent their hands from wandering where they shouldn’t. 

Arya is small for a girl who’s seen thirteen name days.  And she still hasn’t flowered.  Toppance keeps her in the kitchen -- and out of the bedrooms -- for that reason.  (The man may run a brothel but he’s no barbarian.)  But Arya’s flat chest and boyish figure don’t always deter the men.  They’ve come for a whore and don’t take too kindly to having to wait for one.    

Arya’s still a maid, even though she’s lived in a whore house since birth.  But that’s only because for the past five years she’s kept a sharp dagger on her person at all times.  And isn’t afraid to use it.

“Wench!” a man cries out from the far end of the room.  He’s a great big jowly man.  Arya can tell by how red his face is that he’s already half in his cups.  He slams his fist on the table in impatience.  “Another bowl!”

When Toppance’s girls saw how many men were with this Baratheon party they quickly made up a big tureen of hot stew.  Arya’s grateful for small mercies.  In the time it takes Arya to go from kitchen to table the heat from the bowls warms her hands enough to keep them from becoming painfully stiff.  If the girls had prepared something else – cold mutton, perhaps – or if they’d made nothing at all, Arya would be forced to blow on her hands repeatedly and rub them together to keep warm.

Just as Arya gives the last man his stew, Toppance pushes aside the red velvet curtain and walks into the common room.  He takes one look at the man Arya serves and he pales, his jaw dropping. 

“Your grace!” Toppance squeaks.  He nearly topples to the ground in his haste to bend the knee.  His face goes from deathly pale to beet red in an instant.  “I… I had no idea you were here, your grace.”  He looks up, then, and glares at Arya.   “Our stupid girl didn’t tell me.”

_Your grace?_

Slowly, Arya turns to look at the man to whom she’d just given a hot bowl of stew.  And her eyes go round with surprise. 

Before this moment, Arya had never before seen Prince Gendry Baratheon, heir to the Iron Throne, in person.   To her knowledge he’s never been here before tonight.  But King Robert Baratheon, the First of His Name – and Prince Gendry’s father – has been a frequent customer of Toppance’s for as long as Arya can remember.  The young man sitting before her now could be none other than King Robert’s heir, as he is his spitting image.  The color of his hair is the telltale Baratheon black, his shoulders are broad and true – and his eyes, which are now fixed squarely on Arya’s face, are the flawless blue of a mid-summer sky.

When Arya realizes she’s staring she flushes scarlet and drops to her knees.  She quickly bows her head like Toppance taught her to do whenever a highborn Lord pays a visit.

“Your grace,” she murmurs, eyes on the ground.  She can still feel the prince’s eyes on her, and she squirms uncomfortably.

“Please, your grace,” Toppance says, from his position on the ground.  “There’s no need for you to wait any longer.  Come with me and I’ll –“

“That won’t be necessary,” the prince interrupts.  Arya looks up at him and notices a prominent, jagged scar underneath his bottom lip.  She briefly wonders how someone who’s lived such a privileged life could have earned a mark like that.   

“I beg your pardon, your grace?” Toppance asks, standing up clumsily. 

“I’m only here because it’s my eighteenth name day and my Lord father sent me here to – celebrate it,” Prince Gendry explains.  He sounds embarrassed.  “He’s not here right now, though, and what he doesn’t find out won’t hurt him.  My men here will have use of your services, but I’m perfectly content to sit here with some ale while they’re…. busy.”  The prince takes a sip from his flagon as color creeps up his cheeks.

Toppance shrugs.  “If your grace is certain –“

“I am,” Prince Gendry assures him.  “Quite certain.”

Toppance nods and shrugs again, apparently satisfied.  He approaches the three men seated to the prince’s left and taps them on the shoulder, letting them know his girls are ready for them.  Amidst hearty shouts and claps on the prince’s back as they pass by, the men follow Toppance behind the red curtain.

* * *

 

Even though Prince Gendry shows no interest in the girls who work here it’s abundantly clear he has no objection to Toppance’s ale. 

Arya brings him flagon after flagon as his men take their turns.  And the prince wastes no time in draining them, one after the other.

None of Prince Gendry’s men spend more than a few minutes back there.  It’s not clear to Arya whether it’s because they just don’t _need that much time_ – or whether they feel awkward being with a whore when their prince waits out here, drinking himself into a stupor.  Either way, as his men march back out, red in the face and sweating, they wink at Gendry and clap him on the back jovially.

For his part Prince Gendry merely rolls his eyes at them and continues to drink. 

He also seems to enjoy watching Arya as she moves about the common room.  He keeps his gaze upon her as she works, tidying up the mess his drunken men left behind.

She doesn’t know why he’s watching her.  Normally men only stare if they’re about to try something funny.  But Gendry turned down Toppance’s whores – grown women, all of them, with great big tits and curvy hips.  So that can’t be it.

Whatever his reasons, she can feel his gaze upon her as she moves about the room as acutely as a physical touch.  It makes her nervous.

Finally, after what feels like a very long time, Prince Gendry speaks to her.

“What’s your name?” he asks.  His voice is rough but not unkind.  As heir to the Iron Throne he’s entitled to demand anything of her that he wishes.  But it’s clear he’s asking her to share her name, not demanding she do so.

“Arya,” she says.

“You have a surname, Arya?”

“No, your grace.”  She stands a little taller.  Most of the girls here are ashamed of their baseborn status but Arya’s not.  She doesn’t care that her mother was a whore and that she’s the get of some man she’ll never know.  Arya’s mother was strong, and brave, and fierce.  Those are the very best traits a person can have. 

Arya has met far too many cruel highborn lords and ladies to ever feel shame over being a bastard.

If Prince Gendry is taken aback by speaking with a girl named Waters he doesn’t show it.  He drinks deeply from his flagon again, his eyes still on her.  The look on his face is inscrutable, and she fidgets under his gaze.

After another very long moment he speaks again.

“Does this Lord Toppance – does he treat you well?” he asks tentatively. 

“Yes, your grace.”  It’s the truth.  For thirteen years he’s let her live under his roof and has kept her belly full.  He gives her a small wage even though she doesn’t earn him a single penny in return.

“You look cold, though,” he muses.  He worries his bottom lip with his teeth as his eyes travel from her face to her hands, which are red and raw from the frigid dish water.

She shrugs her shoulders.  “Winter is coming,” she tells him.  “Everyone’s cold.  I’m no colder than anyone else.”

He frowns as he takes in the rest of her.  Her shabby shoes.  Her worn shift. 

He looks back up at her face and shakes his head.

He takes his wool cloak off his shoulders and gets out of his chair.  And he walks over to her, one half of his mouth quirking up in a half smile.

“Here,” he says, looking right into her eyes.  Arya isn’t certain she’s ever seen eyes that blue.  The prince drapes his gold wool cloak bearing the black Baratheon stag around her small body without another word. 

The prince looks down at her and leaves his hands on her shoulders for what feels like a very long time.  His palms are warm despite the room’s pervasive chill.  She can feel the heat of his hands through the thick fabric of the cloak, through her threadbare shift, and down to her skin.

Arya shivers a little at his touch – which makes no sense, given that she’s warmer in this moment than she’s been in months.

It takes her a long while to find her voice again.

“Your grace,” she says, her voice shaky.  “Your cloak?  It’s… it’s got the Baratheon stag on it.  I can’t take this.”  Toppance’s girls have repeatedly and loudly forbidden her from ever accepting gifts from a man.  Gifts to a girl who hasn’t flowered lead to nothing good.

“You _can_ take it,” he says.  He waves his hand dismissively.  “I’ve got plenty of others.  And you’re freezing.”

Something about the complacent tone of his voice irks her.  She stands up straighter and squares her shoulders.  “I’m not something to be pitied, your Grace,” she says, with as much haughtiness as she can manage.  “I’m not a charity case.  Or a Flea Bottom wretch, neither.  I earn my own keep.”

The prince shakes his head.  “Keep it, Arya,” he insists.  “It’s a royal command.”  He bites the inside of his cheek and tries to hide his smile.  But he can’t manage it.  He begins to laugh, his blue eyes twinkling in amusement.  “No, it’s not a royal command.  But please; just take it.” He looks down at the ground.  “I’ll sleep better knowing you have something to keep you warm at night.”

As offended as Arya is at the implication that she’s a charity case, and as afraid as she is of what the other girls will say when they find out, Arya knows she cannot refuse a gift from the prince.  She’s always had a careless tongue, but one wrong word to the Iron Throne’s heir could land her in the dungeons.

So she holds her tongue.

“Thank you, your grace,” she grits out, digging her fingernails into her palms so she doesn’t say the wrong thing.  She wraps the cloak a little more tightly around her body.  It is, in fact, very warm. 

As loathe as she is to admit it, it feels wonderful.

A long, awkward pause settles between them after that.  In the silence that fills the room Arya can hear the last of Prince Gendry’s men in the back room.  It’s nothing Arya hasn’t heard half a thousand times before, but tonight, the sounds of their thrusting and grunting make her blush.

“I better go,” Prince Gendry tells her at last.  “I’m sick to death of waiting for those idiots.”

“All… all right, your grace,” Arya says.  She gestures to the cloak on her shoulders.  “Won’t you be cold on your ride back to the castle?”  One last attempt to get him to reconsider.

“I never get cold,” Prince Gendry tells her.  A lie, Arya knows; but she doesn’t press the issue. 

He gathers his remaining things and walks towards Toppance’s front door. 

“Good night, your grace,” she says.  “And… and thank you again.”

Before leaving the brothel Prince Gendry turns back to look at Arya.  And he smiles.

“Good night, Arya Waters.  Be well.”

* * *

 

It takes some doing to hide Gendry’s large cloak underneath her worn and tattered bedsheets. 

But in the end she thinks she’s managed to keep the other girls from noticing.

Arya sleeps better that night than she has in recent memory.  Toppance does treat her well; that had not been a lie.  Still, her nights are typically restless affairs, her dreams confusing and strange. 

Tonight, however, underneath Prince Gendry’s warm and comfortable cloak, her sleep is peaceful.  She dreams of forests and streams, and of endless summer.  And in these dreams she sees a wide open field in which young direwolves and stags are at play.


	2. The Second Meeting

When Gendry arrives at the Red Keep after riding from Lord Toppance’s brothel, half frozen in his saddle and not nearly as drunk as he wanted to be, his uncle Renly is waiting for him at the gates.

“Your father is still awake, your grace,” Renly tells him as Gendry dismounts.  He sounds apologetic.  Gendry guesses he probably is.  “He wishes to speak with you.”

Gendry’s stomach roils at the thought of meeting with his father tonight.  The king most likely wants him to share sordid details about his evening that he wouldn’t have wanted to discuss even if such details existed.

Gendry tells Renly nothing of these misgivings.  He clenches his jaw tightly and nods as the stable boy leads his horse away.

“I’ll find him,” Gendry promises grimly, giving his uncle his leave.

* * *

 

Finding Robert Baratheon that night proves an easy task.  

The king sits alone in the small council room – a place he habitually avoids during the day but one of his favorite nighttime haunts.  He wears nothing but his nightclothes and a ridiculous velvet robe that does little to hide his girth.  His blue eyes are downcast, fixed firmly on a map of the Seven Kingdoms Gendry knows he’s only pretending to study.

Gendry coughs into his hand to alert his father to his presence.

The king looks up at once.  At the sight of Gendry’s face – flushed and very red from his frigid ride – he brays with laughter.  He stands up from his chair and strides over to his eldest son, beaming at him with such obvious pride Gendry is suddenly nauseous.

Oblivious to his son’s discomfiture he claps Gendry on the back with both hands.  Hard.  He waggles his eyebrows suggestively.

“Well done, son,” Robert Baratheon says.  He gestures to where Gendry’s cloak should have been and laughs again.  Assuming, most like, that Gendry’s missing cloak is now on the back of whichever whore took Gendry’s _maidenhead_ , as he’d so crassly put it earlier tonight.

Gendry is in no mood to get into what did happen at Lord Toppance’s brothel.  Nor what actually happened to his cloak.  He nods wordlessly until the king, satisfied with what he thinks his son did that evening, leaves him in peace and goes to bed.

* * *

 

Gendry’s sleep that night is fitful.

His conscience eats at him for leaving Arya Waters behind when he fled the brothel.  She’s far too young to live in a place like that, even if she never has to see the wrong side of that red curtain.

She’s a pretty girl.  Obviously hard-working.  And fearless as well; that much was certain.  Gendry guesses the girl is smart as a whip.

He knows there’s nothing he could have done tonight that would have significantly changed Arya’s circumstances.  She’s likely a whore’s daughter, the get of some highborn lord who’ll never claim her.  When she comes of age, she’ll probably become a whore herself.

Arya’s future was likely set in stone the moment she was born.

Nevertheless, Gendry spends most of the overnight hours with her face firmly in his mind’s eye.  Racking his brain for ways he could have saved her from that future.

* * *

 

He doesn’t see the young bastard girl with the bright gray eyes and the quick wit again until the second full year of winter is nearly over.   

Gendry hasn’t gone back to Toppance’s since the night he met her.  He may have given in to his father’s demands once.  Or at the least, pretended to.  But a lifetime with his mother – now but a bitter shadow of the proud Northern wolf she once was – has taught Gendry everything he needs to know about whoring.

Fortunately for him, that excursion on his eighteenth nameday satisfied his father well enough.  He’s never pushed Gendry to go back, in any case.  Gendry counts that a small mercy.

He does still think about Arya on occasion.  Whenever his father pays Toppance a visit he wonders if she still lives there, serving highborn men like King Robert Baratheon while they wait their turn.  Sometimes, on especially cold nights when it feels like there isn’t enough firewood in all of King’s Landing to keep his bedchamber warm, Gendry wonders if she still has his cloak.

But by the end of the second year of winter tensions in the Realm are running high.  The heir to the Iron Throne no longer has time to think about smart young girls in unfortunate situations.

Before even the first flakes of snow began to fall on King’s Landing, Queen Lyanna made it a personal mission to ensure every corner of the Realm was as well-provisioned for this long winter as possible. "It’s what any Stark of Winterfell would do in my position,” she explained to her children as she stayed up late, night after night, penning her letters.

The crown soon learned not everyone heeded her advice.  Even among those who did listen, many are now running out of food.  The situation is especially dire in the outer reaches of the Realm where provisions are often scarce even in summer.

Many smallfolk are going hungry.  Some lay the blame for their empty bellies squarely at the feet of the King, despite his Queen’s valiant efforts.  According to Lord Varys’ web, a dangerous few whisper of open rebellion.

The halcyon days when Gendry spent his time riding and fencing with the Knight of Flowers are long gone.  His time is now mostly spent in small council meetings, where he frequently presides in his father’s stead.

“It’s good practice for the day when you are king yourself, your grace,” Lord Tywin Lannister assures him at these meetings, nodding sagely.  Lannister might be the King’s Hand but the barely-concealed disdain he holds for the king he serves drips from his every word.

The small council is ostensibly tasked with developing strategies to save the smallfolk of Westeros from this endless winter. The moment the Spider mentions talk of rebellion, however, the primary subject of discussion quickly becomes which highborn lady Prince Gendry should take to wife to shore up support for the crown.

Gendry will do his duty when the time comes.  He knows that at twenty, and as heir to the Iron Throne, he is rather old to still be unwed.  When a bride is selected for him he will have little choice but to do as he is bid.  

Regardless, the subject of his future betrothal never fails to set his teeth on edge.

Dorne, being the last of the Seven Kingdoms to bend the knee to King Robert Baratheon and the most openly hostile to his reign, was naturally the first region towards which the small council turned its focus.  The crown sent an official marriage proposal to Sunspear several moons ago, proposing a union between Prince Gendry and the Lady Arianne Martell.

Lady Martell’s blunt and unequivocal refusal finally arrived this morning via raven.  Written in her own hand, the letter states she will not marry into the family that sacked King’s Landing and saw Elia Martell murdered.

“Her refusal is an insult to the crown and an outrage,” Lord Tywin says grimly, after reading the letter aloud.  He tosses it aside.  “Lady Arianne is young but not this bold  She cannot have decided this alone.  I don’t doubt she wrote this with Oberyn Martell whispering in her ear the entire time.”

Gendry does not doubt that either.   _A woman is not chattel_ , Oberyn said, loudly and memorably, on his last visit to King’s Landing some years ago.  Doran Martell, the prince of Dorne and Arianne’s father, would likewise never force his daughter to marry against her wishes.  Even if that means his daughter would never be queen.

“A slight it might be,” Renly agrees.  “And yet, if the Spider’s network tells it true, we need Dorne’s support if we’re to survive this winter.”  He looks Gendry in the eye before continuing.  “Your grace, it is my opinion that we must overlook this insult and find another way to secure Dornish support of the crown.  And quickly.”

“Perhaps the betrothal of your sweet sister Myrcella to Trystane Martell, Arianne’s young brother, would be an easier pill for the Dornish to swallow, your grace,” Lord Varys suggests.  “It would give Dorne a princess, rather than force them to give one up to King’s Landing.”

Gendry pauses before answering Lord Varys.  He isn’t certain Dorne would agree to wed Trystane to a Baratheon princess when it refused the crown’s similar proposal to Lady Arianne.  

He also cannot help but feel that Oberyn Martell, for all his oddities and hot-headedness, has the right of things.  Gendry thinks of his own mother, whose happiness and freedom was ripped away from her when her betrothed laid siege to King’s Landing to reclaim what he believed was his.  The thought of Myrcella being thrust into a similar situation is repellant to Gendry.  

But like his mother’s betrothal to Robert Baratheon more than twenty years ago, this is ultimately not his decision to make.

Gendry chooses his next words to the small council carefully.

“I sit here in my father’s stead,” he begins, very slowly.  “And it is my opinion that my sister is too young to be wed.”  A lie, of course; Myrcella has had a woman’s body for several years, having flowered before winter even began.  “As you know, however, I have no real authority in these matters.  The king will need to be consulted before decisions regarding Myrcella are made.”  

“Of course, your grace,” Lord Varys simpers.  “We shall put it before him immediately.”

Gendry takes a swallow from his tankard of water and nods.

“This still leaves the matter of your own betrothal, your grace,” Lord Tywin says, steepling his fingers and resting his chin on the point they make.

“It does,” Gendry agrees, gritting his teeth without realizing it.

“If Sunspear accepts this alternate proposal,” Lord Tywin continues, “Dorne’s support will be secured, leaving you free to make other – perhaps better – alliances.  Your grace.”  Lord Tywin says this all in that queer way of his, looking not so much at Gendry as _through_ him.

Gendry has no response to Lord Tywin’s implication.  He stares down at the map of the Seven Kingdoms painted on the table, his face turning red, pretending to listen as the small council moves on to the next order of business.

* * *

 

In his solar that night, and half in his cups, the King quickly agrees to marry his only daughter to the young Martell prince.

Lord Tywin wastes no time in drawing up the terms of the new proposal.  To Gendry’s horror, the King hastily signs the document and applies the royal seal without reading it.

“Your grace,” Gendry begins, his frustration mounting.  "With all due respect, don’t you think we ought to consult Mother about this first?  And Myrcella herself?”

The king waves Gendry off dismissively with a gesture he’s well-accustomed to.  He reaches for his tankard of ale.

“Not necessary,” he says, before drinking deeply.  “It’s a good idea.  The matter is settled.”    

“We shall send a raven to Dorne immediately, your grace,” Lord Varys assures him, bowing his head.  He takes the sealed document from the King’s hands and rushes with it out of the room.

As the older men discuss how Sunspear might react to this alternate offer, Oberyn Martell's words ring loudly in Gendry’s ears.  His collar is a tightening noose around his neck.  If Dorne accepts, Gendry’s young sister will be sent away from the only home she has ever known without anyone asking, or even caring, whether it’s something she wants.

Gendry’s hands start to shake.  He needs to leave before he says something he will regret later.

“I need air,” he mutters under his breath to no one.  His hands clench involuntarily into fists as he stumbles towards the open door of the solar.

* * *

If his mother knew Gendry occasionally strolled around King’s Landing without an escort – late at night, no less – she would see his head mounted on a pike.

There are times, however, when Gendry simply cannot abide staying in the Red Keep another minute, no matter how hostile the smallfolk in King’s Landing might be towards the crown.  Tonight is one of those times.  

As loathe as he is to upset his mother, Gendry decides what she doesn’t know cannot hurt her.

The night air is frigid.  Gendry shivers a little, turning up the collar of his cloak to try and keep out the chill.  He normally prefers to take these secret walks during warmer weather.  Tonight, however, he finds the cold bracing.  A kind of antidote to the irritation coursing through him.

Gendry walks rapidly and aimlessly through the city.  He passes horse-drawn carriages and shopkeepers without really seeing them.  Before leaving the Red Keep tonight he made a point not to wear anything that might identify him as a Baratheon, much less a prince.  Anyone who would look upon him tonight – his body braced against the harsh winter wind just like everyone else’s – would likely think him but a well-dressed lord.

For an insane moment Gendry fantasizes about what that sort of freedom must taste like.

He’s so absorbed by his dark mood as he walks through the city that he doesn’t realize a thief has been stalking his every movement from the shadows until it’s too late.

When he finally does notice the small, furtive figure, he tries to run.  But it’s in vain.  A moment later, a slender arm is around his neck and a blade is at his throat.

Gendry yelps loudly and flinches against the knife's cold bite.  He takes several deep breaths as he tries to stay calm.

 _This thief doesn’t know who he’s got_.   _He likely just wants to relieve me of the contents of my pockets._ Gendry tries to reason with himself, but his heart beats so rapidly it feels ready to burst from his chest.  He tries to steady his breathing, tries to stand perfectly still as he struggles to remember the disarming maneuvers Ser Loras taught him.  

But then the thief speaks, scattering Gendry’s frantic thoughts like dust on the wind.  

“Your coin, ser,” a young girl’s voice rings out behind him.  "All of it.  Now.”

 _A girl?_  Gendry is so shocked by this it takes him a moment to find his voice.

“Young lady,” he says after a very long pause.  His voice is embarrassingly shaky, his words clouds of steam in the cold night air.  “You don’t want to do this.  Look, I can help -- “

The girl unexpectedly cuts him off with a loud shriek.  Her knife clatters to the ground.

“Your -- your grace!” she shouts, panicked.

Gendry doesn’t know how the girl now knows his identity when she didn’t before.  He pivots on one foot -- slowly, so as not to scare her off -- until he’s standing face to face with his unarmed assailant.

Suddenly, he's staring down into a pair of gray eyes he hasn't thought of in many moons but would recognize anywhere.  The girl from the brothel holds his gaze, her eyes round as saucers as the enormity of what she's just done hits her.  

They stand there, wordlessly staring at each other for a very long moment.  Before he’s realized it’s happening Gendry's eyes dart over her, taking her in.

For reasons that escape him, Arya Waters is dressed as a boy.  Her hair has been cut very short, and she’s wearing the breeches and tunic one might see on a baker's apprentice.

Despite her attire it's quite plain she's no boy.   Her eyes and face look much the same as he remembers them.  Her neck, however, is a bit longer, its curve a touch more delicate.  It softens all of her features and makes her look more womanly, somehow.  Arya’s worn brown tunic does little to hide the gentle swell of the small breasts she did not have two years ago.  Nor do her breeches hide that her narrow hips are a touch wider than they used to be.

Gendry realizes, too late, that he's staring at her. His eyes quickly flit back to hers, color beginning to stain his cheeks.

"Arya?" he asks in disbelief.  But it's unquestionably her.

"Your grace," she responds, her eyes wide, wild with terror.  "I'm so sorry, your grace, I had no idea it was you.  I, I swear I'm no thief, not usually, I _swear_ it."

"It's... it's all right," he tells her.  He adjusts the collar of his cloak and takes a deep breath, trying to calm the nerves that are still with him even though he now knows he’s perfectly safe.  "I'm fine.  You're fine, too.  I won't breathe a word of this to anyone."

All the fear goes out of her at once.  Her shoulders slump forward and she sighs, looking sheepishly at the ground.  "Thank you, your grace," she says meekly.  "Thank you."

She looks up at him again and gives a small nod.  She turns on her heel, ready to take flight.    

Without thinking, Gendry grabs her arm to stop her.

“Your grace,” she says, tugging on her arm a little to free herself.   He doesn’t let go.  Soon enough she stops trying to leave.  “How -- why do you remember me?”

Gendry blanches a little.  They spoke for less than five minutes nearly two years ago in very different circumstances.  What answer can he give her that won't make him seem completely depraved?  

“I… have a very good memory,” he lies.  He drops her arm with a reluctance he does not understand.  To his surprise and relief, she doesn’t run.

Something has obviously changed for Arya since he last saw her.  The girl he met two years ago appeared well-fed and well-treated.  She wouldn’t be out here, dressed like an urchin boy and robbing people at knifepoint if her situation hadn't become extremely dire.

Did some drunk man put his big hands on her body behind that red velvet curtain?  Did he strike her?  Did he _rape_ her, taking her maidenhead while she screamed in exchange for a handful of coins?  Gendry doesn’t know, but the thought of it fills him with a surge of unexpected rage.

“What happened, Arya?” he asks, struggling to tamp down his anger.  "You don’t owe me an explanation,” he adds quickly. "And you are free to go if you wish. I’m just... curious, is all.  You seemed well and happy enough at Toppance’s.”

Arya looks down at the ground again.  

“Lord Toppance started treating me like his other girls about a year ago, your grace,” she says.  “As soon as I flowered.”  She still doesn’t meet his eyes but there’s no shame in her voice.  

Gendry bites his bottom lip.  He had been curious, but he hadn’t meant for Arya to divulge such private information.  He’s about to apologize for prying, for being entirely inappropriate with her, when she speaks again.

“The first man Toppance gave me was very rough.  Violent.  Some highborn lord from the Neck.”  She spits on the ground, disgusted.  “I had Needle with me, though.  I ended it before he could finish.”

Gendry looks at her blankly.  “Needle?”

Arya points at the blade lying on the ground near her feet.  She bends down and picks it up.

“My dagger," she explains. “I call it _Needle_.  I heard once that knights name their swords.”  She shrugs her shoulders.  “I know I’m no knight, and this ain’t no sword.  But I named it anyway.”

Arya Waters naming her dagger is such a deliciously brazen thing that Gendry has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from breaking into a stupid grin.

“I cut him real bad,” Arya continues, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.  “Right on the top of his leg," she says, pointing to the top of her own thigh to clarify.  She looks up at Gendry and gives him a sad smile.

“And then what happened?” Gendry prompts, furrowing his brows.

Arya sighs.  "The man shouted at me and left, your grace.  Toppance apologized to me later for giving me a brute my first time... but said he had a reputation to maintain and a business to run.”  Arya shifts her eyes, focusing on a spot just over Gendry’s right shoulder.  “He said he couldn’t keep a dangerous girl like me under his roof.”

Gendry closes his eyes and shakes his head.  If Lord Toppance were here right now he's not sure he'd be able to resist the urge to beat him bloody.

“Have you been out here ever since, then?  For an entire year?"  Gendry asks her as gently as he can.  He gestures to the space around them -- the street, the gutters, the open sky.

Arya nods.  "Aye, your grace."

A lump forms in his throat at the thought of Arya out here on her own, forced to fend for herself in the dead of winter.

"And how are you surviving?"

She shrugs her shoulders again.  “I’m surviving, your grace,” she says very quietly.  The pink flush rising on her cheeks tells Gendry she's surviving by doing something she knows she shouldn’t.  He sends up a brief prayer to the Seven that she’s only thieving -- that she isn’t spreading her legs for coin -- but it’s not his place to ask and he doesn’t pry.

He does something far more rash.

“What – what can I do to help?” he stammers.

“Help?”  Arya looks confused.

Gendry starts speaking very rapidly.  “I don’t know if I can find you work in the Red Keep,” he tells her, tripping over his words.  “I don’t know that you’d want to work there anyway.”  In truth, the thought of his father somehow recognizing Arya as a girl from Toppance’s brothel is too horrible to bear.

Arya flinches.  “The Red Keep?”  She shakes her head. “I never said anything about wanting to leave Flea Bottom, your grace.”

Gendry pushes on as though she hadn’t spoken.  “But mayhaps I can make inquiries at taverns.  At knights’ houses, here in King’s Landing.  Good places,” he adds hastily.  “Places that need a hardworking girl to run errands or do the cooking.”  His eyes flit to hers. “Nothing like what you left behind.”

Arya says nothing for a long moment.   

“Thank you for your concern, your grace,” she says eventually.  Her tongue darts out to wet her chapped lips, drawing Gendry’s eyes inexplicably to her perfectly bow-shaped mouth.  “But I’m getting along fine on my own.”  

Just then, a stiff gust of wind blows by them.  Arya wears no cloak and her hands are bare.  She grits her teeth as her body convulses for a long, excruciating moment.  Her arms go around her small body involuntarily as she tries desperately to conserve what little warmth remains in her.

Gendry shakes his head at her when the wind dies down.

“No,” he tells her bluntly.  “Winter is here, Arya Waters.  To stay in Flea Bottom is to die.”

She looks up at him again, eyes flashing with something Gendry cannot identify.

“Why do you want to help me, your grace?” she spits out angrily.  “I’m nothing.  No one.   _Why_?”

Her words give him pause.   _Why indeed?_  

He doesn’t have an answer for her.  Until, suddenly, he does.

“Because this is one thing I _can_ do,” he tells her very quietly, not certain it’s the whole truth.

* * *

  
It isn’t until much later -- when Gendry is back at the Red Keep, warm in his own bed -- that he begins to wonders how the sound of a voice she hadn’t heard in two years was enough to tell Arya who he was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't normally like to include back story in my a/ns but I feel it's (perhaps?) warranted here. 
> 
> In this universe, the Battle of the Trident and the Sack of King's Landing happened more or less as they did in canon. However, Ned Stark found his sister Lyanna healthy -- and very much alive -- in Dorne. Why she went on to marry Robert Baratheon later, after everything she'd been through -- and why the heck Tywin Lannister is King Robert's Hand -- will be addressed later in the story. 
> 
> My plan going forward is to update this story every other Monday. That said, the only thing I'm better at than coming up with update schedules for myself is failing to keep to them (especially at the beginning of a new semester). ;) However, I'm very excited about this new story and intend to make it my #1 fic priority for the foreseeable future.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading. If you have thoughts about this chapter I'd love to hear them (even if they're of the HOW VERY DARE YOU variety). I can also be found on tumblr as jeeno2.


	3. Changes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finished this chapter a little early so I'm posting on a Sunday night rather than Monday. :)

It took six months of Arya proving herself on the streets of Kings Landing before the boys in Flea Bottom’s most notorious little gang of thieves reluctantly agreed to let her join them. 

She’s better than the others at what they do.  She’s small, so she’s fast on her feet.  She’s got the nimblest fingers any of them have ever seen even if they’ll never admit it.  And she can disappear into Kings Landings’ long shadows better than any cat. 

Perhaps most importantly, Arya’s skills of observation and evasion, honed during a lifetime of dodging drunk men’s grabby hands at Toppance’s brothel, allow her to sneak up on lords and knights and highborn ladies in a way none of the others can.

But none of this matters on the rare nights Arya’s take is lighter than the others.  Because she’s a girl, on those nights she still gets treated badly by Lommy, the pimply sixteen-year-old who acts like their leader and who the others all call _Ser_.

Tonight Arya returns to their makeshift camp under the heating grates empty-handed.  Her unexpected encounter with Prince Gendry earlier rattled her so badly her hands are still shaking, even two hours later.  Finding another target after that would have been pointless.  Or worse.   

In the time she’s been with this lot she’s never come back to camp with nothing.  She doesn’t know how Lommy will react.  Or what he might do to her.  He hit her one time when all she had to show for an entire night’s work was a handful of coppers.  He’s taken her share of food half a dozen other times just because he could.

Even on those nights, though, Arya’d managed to bring him more than _nothing_.

“What’s this, Arry?  What happened?” Lommy asks with a sneer when Arya turns out her empty pockets.  Lommy knows her real name well enough.  He just likes to say it wrong it to make her mad.  Lommy looks her up and down with such contempt it takes all of Arya’s willpower not to grab Needle out of her back pocket and slice the smirk off his face. 

“I’m sorry, _Ser_ ,” Arya says, hoping an apology will help.  She tries to make it sound as sincere as she can. 

(But Hot Pie – the stocky boy who cooks for the group and her only real friend here – shoots her a pointed look from behind Lommy.  He shakes his head a little, letting her know the apology didn’t sound real.  Her stomach clenches with worry.) 

Arya hates that she must stay in this idiot’s good graces to survive.  But facts are facts.  It’s the middle of the harshest winter anyone still alive can remember.  And she’s a girl, no matter how much she tries to hide it with short hair and breeches that don’t fit.  Being a girl on the streets of Kings Landing makes her a target for folks worse than Lommy, even if she’d give them a fight they’d never forget.

When things are bad with him, she reminds herself most of this lot are all right.  Especially Hot Pie.  She’s learned enough this past year to know that living in Flea Bottom in the middle of winter with no one to share food and other supplies with means certain death.  Every night, before she falls asleep, she promises herself she’ll be gone the second the weather starts to warm.  Until that time she knows she has no choice but to grovel and please.

For a brief moment, Arya considers telling Lommy what really happened tonight.  Perhaps he’d finally show her respect if he knew she’d just attacked the heir to the Iron Throne and walked away to tell the tale. 

She quickly dismisses the idea.  Prince Gendry has shown her kindness twice now.  He gave her his cloak two years ago just because she was a little girl who looked cold.  And he could easily have had her thrown her into a dungeon tonight, but didn’t.  She doesn’t want to repay his kindness by telling Lommy anything that might make him sound craven.  Or worse, an easy target.

“I just had a bad night is all,” Arya says, shrugging her shoulders.  “It’s cold out, isn’t it?  Not many people are about.”  She looks Lommy right in the eye when she says it to make it sound convincing. 

It doesn’t work. 

“Liar,” Lommy spits.  “Plenty of folk are out tonight, you little bitch.  Pyp and Grenn each came back with half a hundred coins in just three hours.”

“Aye,” Grenn – a gangly boy of seventeen – agrees from Lommy’s right-hand side.  He shakes the satchel he carries to prove it, jangling its contents together loudly.  “I got coppers _and_ stags in there, mind.”

Hot Pie sighs, exasperated.

“That’s good news, then, innit?” he asks Lommy pointedly.  He walks up to him and pokes him on the shoulder.  Lommy’s eyes snap to his.  “It means we got plenty to go around even if Arya had a bad night.”   

Hot Pie puts his hands on his hips and looks around at the other boys as if daring them to challenge him.

“Hot Pie --” Lommy begins, warningly.

“Leave her alone,” Hot Pie insists, interrupting him.

Hot Pie isn’t much of a thief.  In the time Arya’s been here he hasn’t gone out on a “raid,” as Lommy likes to call their nightly thieving expeditions, even once.  But none of the boys, save Hot Pie, know one lick about cooking.  Without him they’d all have starved to death before Arya even left Toppance’s. 

Lommy knows this to be true.  As such, Hot Pie is one of the few people whose counsel Lommy will occasionally heed.

“Fine,” Lommy says.  He rolls his eyes, and punches Arya in the arm, hard – but not as hard as he could have done – before stalking off to the back of the camp.

Hot Pie isn’t always around to help her like this.   Arya knows his interventions – while helpful in the short term, sparing her as they do from Lommy’s punches and theft from the others – actually hurt her in the long run.  She hears what the others all say behind her back, their snickering about what a soft little girl she is.    

If Arya planned to stay with this group any longer than she absolutely needed to this would concern her.  But she’s counting the days until she can slit Lommy’s throat and be on her way.  In the meantime she’s just glad for any bit of friendship she can get.

* * *

 

None of them know about Prince Gendry’s cloak.

His gift to her was one of the few things she took with her when she left the brothel.  It’s a bit worn, now, the once-bright gold background rather dingy after so much time spent hidden in her bedroll and knapsack.   But it’s just as warm tonight as it was when Prince Gendry first gave it to her.  And for that she will be forever grateful.

Arya cannot wear it while she’s working.  The extra bulk it provides would slow her down far too much.  Its unmistakable black-on-gold sigil would also make hiding in the shadows impossible.  Arya would be arrested in seconds if she was seen in this cloak on the streets of Kings Landing, even if she happened to be minding her own business at the time.  The gold cloaks would certainly assume she’d stolen it, and waste no time in tossing her into the dungeon she should have been shown to tonight.

It’s an easy thing to sleep underneath, though, this cloak.  Lommy doesn’t allow fires after nightfall so during the overnight hours their camp is bathed in perpetual near-darkness.  No one usually spares her as much as a backwards glance when she’s on her pallet anyway.  A thin dark sheet spread over the top of the cloak hides the black stag from any suspicious wayward eyes well enough, letting Arya sleep warmly and in peace.

As she chases sleep tonight, she gently traces the outline of the stag over and over again with her fingertips. Try as she might, she has been unable to stop thinking about the cloak’s prior owner since the moment earlier this evening when he bid her goodnight.

And yet before tonight it had been many moons since she’d thought of the prince at all.

After his memorable visit to Toppance’s brothel, Arya’d heard only the very occasional whisper about him from the other girls.  He never did come back a second time so there really wasn’t much for them to talk about.  It was typically innocent gossip when the girls did mention him – clucking to one another other about how handsome he was, for example, the way they sometimes did after a visit from an especially kind or comely patron.  Some of the girls wondered if Prince Gendry had a lady waiting for him somewhere, and if he loved her.  If, perhaps, an imminent betrothal was the reason he didn’t join his men on his nameday in fucking one of Toppance’s whores. 

In the weeks following the prince’s visit one of the girls – Malena, Arya thinks she was called; she wasn’t with Toppance long so Arya cannot be certain – sometimes described, in lewd detail, the sorts of things she would _do_ to Prince Gendry if she were his lady.  Her bawdy suggestions made all the other girls laugh, but they only made Arya furious for reasons she did not understand.  

Either way, all of that was a very long time ago.

The truth is, despite the fact that Arya sleeps under his old cloak every night she hasn’t thought about Prince Gendry much in nearly two years.  She never forgot him, to be sure.  On the contrary: she recognized him tonight the moment she heard his voice.  But as kind as he’d been to her that one night, long ago, Arya has been far too preoccupied with her own survival to spare much thought for what the heir to the Iron Throne might be doing. 

Tonight, however, she cannot get his visage out of her mind’s eye.   Or his strong, broad shoulders and man’s chest.  His eyes were just as blue tonight as she remembers them being on the rare instances she thinks back on them.  Arya’s seen enough filthy streams and gutters to last several lifetimes but has never visited a proper lake like the ones in Magda’s old picture book.  She wonders if somewhere in Westeros – perhaps up north somewhere, where she’s heard the land is cleaner and the people more earnest – there are clear blue waters that can rival the sparkling tint of Prince Gendry’s eyes. 

These troubling musings linger long after the sun rises the next morning and throughout the following day.  Arya spends as much time as she can on the streets, working her way through highborn and lowborn passersby alike, desperate for some distraction from the confusing direction of her thoughts.

* * *

 

Roughly a week after Arya’s second meeting with the prince, she’s roused from a restless sleep by a black leather boot gently nudging her right shoulder.

She opens one eye blearily.  A well-dressed young man wearing the sigil of House Baratheon on his right breast stares down at her, frowning.

Arya’s jaw drops.  She bolts upright, suddenly wide awake.  Instinctively, she scrambles among her bedsheets for Needle.  Her fingers close around its familiar wooden shaft and she stands up, trying to swallow her rising panic.

She’s been discovered.  She doesn’t know how; she’s been more careful in recent days, making certain to leave behind no trace of her identity after robbing her victims.  She no longer speaks to them with her voice – allowing Needle, instead, to do all the talking – out of fear that her girl’s voice will give her away.  Make it that much easier for her to be discovered and punished.

 _Has the prince changed his mind_?    _Has he told the gold cloaks about my attacking him after all?_

Arya’s heart flops a little in her chest at the thought that the prince might have gone back on his promise to stay silent.  But she ignores her disappointment and fear.  Tamps them down.  She stands up as straight as she can and narrows her eyes menacingly at this Baratheon sentry.

He’s not a frightening-looking man, whoever he is.  He’s stocky, but fairly short of stature.  He looks nothing like the men the crown normally sends to collect criminals. 

To Arya’s surprise, at the sight of her knife his eyes grow wide and his face pales.  After what feels like a very long time indeed he pulls a knife of his own out of his satchel.  It’s a much longer knife than hers, its steel straight and gleaming and true. 

Arya bares her teeth at him, then, tightening her grip around Needle, daring him with her eyes to move first.  He may have a knife, and might be of House Baratheon.  But Arya Waters will be nobody’s prisoner today.

At length, the young man clears his throat.  His eyes dart away from hers to the ground.  “Um, excuse me, miss,” he says.  His voice is shaking.  So is the arm that holds his blade.  That confuses Arya enough that she relaxes her arm and lowers her knife a fraction of an inch.  “I’m not… I’m not here to hurt you, miss.”

Arya blinks at him.  “You’re not?”

He looks up at her.   He tries to smile, but it looks more like a grimace. 

“No,” the man confirms.  “I am Edric Storm.  Squire to Lord Renly Baratheon.”

Arya’s eyes go wide.  “Lord Renly Baratheon?”  She doesn’t understand.  From what she gathered from the girls at the brothel, Lord Renly is a silly fop of a man who spends more time fretting over his wardrobe than anything else.  What could Lord Renly possibly have to do with this?

“Yes,” Edric confirms.  “In fact, I’ve been sent here by Lord Renly to find you.  He’s in need of a girl to help in the kitchen and with other assorted household duties.  He was told your skills in these areas are unparalleled and wishes you to join his household staff at your convenience.”

Arya is thunderstruck.  Her eyebrows shoot up of their own accord.  “What?” she asks weakly.  Now hers is the voice that’s shaking.

Edric tries to smile at her again.  “I’ve been sent here by Lord Renly himself to find you,” Edric repeats.  “He’s in need of a girl to help in the kitchen and with –“

“No,” Arya says, interrupting, shaking her head.  His eyes flit to hers, the look in them inscrutable.  It gives Arya pause.

 _Is it imprudent to interrupt a bastard squire?_   Arya has no idea.

But when he doesn’t say anything else she continues.

“That is to say, I – I heard you just fine the first time,” she stammers.  “No need to say it again.” 

“Oh,” Edric says.  He averts his gaze again, this time choosing to look up at the sky instead of at the ground.

Arya stares at him, dumbfounded.  “What I meant was… how… what are you… _how_ did you…”

She has so many questions for this strange young man she doesn’t know where to begin.  She trails off, biting her lip, willing Edric to give her the answers she’s looking for.

“Prince Gendry,” Edric says simply.  As though that explains everything.  


“What?” Arya asks again.  Shaking her head before Edric can say _Prince Gendry_ again, Arya clarifies.  “Did the prince say those things about me?  How… how did he know I was here?”

“I don’t know how, miss,” Edric says sheepishly.  “Lord Renly told me how to find you, and to offer you the position I just described.  I am to encourage you to accept it, and to show you to your quarters should you do so.”  He smiles at her again.  “Prince Gendry was the one to recommend you to him.  Beyond that, I know nothing more than you do, miss.”


	4. Sisters and Uncles

After a thorough search of the Red Keep, Gendry eventually finds his sister sitting alone in the indoor gardens, her back to him.  She’s delicately perched on the edge of the karp pool along the far side of the verdant rooms, her eyes downcast and her hands neatly folded in her lap.

This arboretum was a bit of ostentatiousness their father had installed at great expense many years ago.  Gendry can only guess at what its upkeep has cost the crown since.  The king has never admitted it, but it’s no secret that his building this space was but the desperate act of a man who realized, too late, that his bride didn’t want him.  As their mother tells it, the moment her brother Ned plucked her from where Rhaegar Targaryen had hidden her away in Dorne over twenty years ago, Robert immediately retained five dozen of the Realm’s most skilled builders to add these great glass rooms to the Red Keep.  He then stocked them with as many northron plants as could readily be obtained this far south of Winterfell.

“Your father wanted me to have an indoor place of natural beauty and light, right here in the city,” the Queen would tell Gendry, her voice guarded, whenever he asked about these rooms as a child.  “To ease the pain I felt over leaving behind everyone and everything I loved.  To remind me of home.”  

 _To convince you to stay_ , Gendry eventually realized, though his mother never said the words aloud.

Despite the lengths his father went to build these gardens, to Gendry’s knowledge his mother has never come here.  Gendry does not know if his father realizes this.  Or if he does, whether he even cares anymore.    

Either way, while these gardens may not have served the king’s original purpose they have long held a special place in Gendry’s heart.  During childhood they were a pretty place for him to play games with his siblings, an oasis within the castle walls far enough away from their meddling Septa that they could be assured of going about their foolish business uninterrupted.    

The time for childish play is long gone, of course.  But Gendry still likes it here.  In the dead of winter, when for long stretches of time nothing can grow outside its walls, the gardens’ warm fragrant air provides a kind of peace and solitude he cannot seem to find anywhere else.

As he enters the gardens Gendry walks towards Myrcella quietly so as not to startle her.  His sister has always been a placid child, having inherited none of the Baratheon fury coursing through his own veins or the Stark mettle that has helped their mother survive marriage to their boorish father.  Myrcella may be Gendry’s spitting image – her long, curly hair may be raven black and her eyes as blue as his – but in all the ways that matter Gendry is as unlike his sister as day is unlike night.

Myrcella appeared to take the news of her betrothal to Trystane Martell rather well when their father announced it over breakfast this morning.  She did not scream, as some girls do.  Neither did she cry, nor throw herself to the ground, nor rend her clothes.  But the smile she gave their father was forced, and she twisted her hands together in her lap the way she’s done when distressed ever since she was a child.

When she asked to be excused from breakfast early, having done nothing with her food but push it around her plate absently with her fork, Gendry knew he had to seek her out, after, to make certain she was all right.  Myrcella, like many of the exotic blooms in these gardens, is oft in need of protection from the harsh realities of the outside world.  Gendry has proudly filled that role her entire life.  It pains him greatly to know that very soon his sister will be another man’s concern.  No matter that Trystane Martell is by all accounts a comely and gentle young man.

“Myrcella,” he says when he reaches her side.  She looks up at the sound of his voice and fixes him with bright blue eyes rimmed with red.

His heart clenches painfully to see evidence of his sister’s recent tears.  But she smiles up at him all the same.

“Gendry,” she says.  She smooths down her skirts, patting the spot next to her on the pool’s stone wall.  She looks up at him, waiting for him to sit next to her as he did when they were children here, throwing stones into this same pool to frighten the fish.

He nods once and obliges, a few inches of space all that separates them.  He takes her small hand in his and squeezes it gently.

She gives a shuddering sigh, making Gendry grit his teeth in frustration.

“If you don’t want this, Myrcella… if you don’t want _him_ …” he begins slowly.  But he trails off, ashamed, because there’s truly nothing he can do to stop it.  His father offered Myrcella’s hand in marriage to House Martell a moon’s turn ago.  And Prince Doran Martell accepted on his son’s behalf.  The plans are in motion, and wedding invitations are already being sent to the farthest corners of the Realm.   

There’s nothing more to be done for it.  Myrcella is to be wed.

“Gendry,” Myrcella says again, very gently.  She shakes her head.  She pats his free hand and he glances up at her.  Her eyes are wide but dry, now, her pale face free from the tracks of her earlier tears.  She must have dashed away all evidence of crying shortly after the tears fell, as she learned to do many years ago whenever in the presence of their stoic mother.  “We both knew this day would come eventually.”

Gendry closes his eyes and squeezes his sister’s hand again.

“If he hurts you, Myrcella, I’ll… I’ll _kill_ him,” he says earnestly.  This, at least, is one thing he _can_ do for her.

“I know,” she says.  She smiles at him again.  “I think… I think it will be all right.  Or at least, it could have been much worse.”  She gives a short laugh.  “Father could have offered me to one of Lord Tywin’s nephews.  Or to his grandson.”

The very thought of Myrcella marrying Joffrey Tyrell – that monster; that blonde-haired abomination who everyone knows is as much Loras Tyrell’s actual trueborn son as Gendry is – causes his bile to rise and his vision to blur.

“True,” he manages to choke out with great difficulty.  He takes several very deep breaths, trying to tamp down his anger.  “It could have been worse.”

Her next words surprise Gendry.  “It’ll be fun, I think,” she says with a mischievous lilt to her voice.

“What?”

She giggles a little.  “The wedding itself I mean,” she clarifies.  “And the weeks leading up to it.  All those parties, here and in Dorne.”  She shrugs her shoulders a little.  It’s true; his sister has always loved a party.  “Plus, Father says Uncle Ned and his family will be travelling down to Kings Landing to see us, and will travel with us to Dorne.  We haven’t seen our cousins in years.”

It’s been more than a decade, more like.  Gendry racks his brain, trying to conjure up an image of their mother’s older brother in his mind’s eye.  But all he can remember of Ned Stark is a solemn-faced man whose seriousness frightened Tommen – hardly more than a babe at the time – so badly he started crying when they were introduced.

“Yes,” Gendry says, without emotion.  He tries to give his sweet sister a smile.  “Seeing the Starks again will be very good indeed.”

They sit together for a long while after that, holding hands, the only noise in the gardens coming from the quiet beat of nearby butterfly wings and the occasional splash from fish diving deeper into the pool for a treat.  As they ponder the rooms in silence Gendry wonders, sadly, if Sunspear’s famed pools will eventually replace these gardens in his sister’s memory.  If her new husband and his family will one day become dearer to her than anything in Kings Landing.

* * *

If Queen Lyanna is pleased that she will soon be seeing her brother, goodsister, and their children again, she shows no outward sign of it that night at dinner. 

On the contrary.  As the King loudly shares with Gendry and Renly the details of his latest hunting expedition – all of which have likely been so heavily embellished Gendry suspects they bear little relation to actual events – Queen Lyanna sits silently at the opposite end of the table, her food untouched and her thin arms folded tightly across her chest.  Every time the King takes another swallow from his flagon of ale her steely eyes flit over to him, her gaze sharper than any dagger Gendry has ever seen.

Myrcella repeatedly tries to engage their mother in conversation.  King Robert is seated to Gendry’s immediate left, and he is speaking too loudly for Gendry to quite make out what his sister is saying.  But from the frustrated look on Myrcella’s face and the tight set of their mother’s jaw it is clear to him that his sister is having no success.  As sometimes happens, their mother will not participate in dinnertime conversation tonight.

It’s not until much later -- after the dessert dishes have been cleared away and the Dornish red poured; roughly an hour after Myrcella and Tommen are excused from the dinner table and shuffled off to bed by Septa Halgane – that the queen finally speaks.

“Robert,” she says quietly.  Her voice is barely above a whisper.  The men immediately stop talking, like she’d just shouted a string of loud epithets rather than softly murmur her husband’s name.

With all eyes in the room on her, Lyanna pushes back from her chair, slowly and with deliberate purpose.  She stands, her back straight, her eyes fixed on her husband.  

To his credit, King Robert actually sets down his glass of wine.  He bites his lip, looking almost nervous as he waits for his wife to continue.  If Gendry didn’t know his father quite as well as he does he’d half wonder if the king were worried about what his queen was about to tell him.

“Yes, Lya,” the king says.  His words are slurred, as they often are after dinner, but sound no less earnest for that.  “What is it, dove?”

The queen flinches at the endearment as though the king had slapped her.  But she recovers quickly, schooling her features.

“I will never forgive you for this,” she says simply, and quietly, her voice icy with barely-controlled rage.

The king raises one eyebrow at her from across the table.  He rolls his eyes a little, as he often does during what he dismissively calls his wife’s _tantrums_.  He picks up his glass of Dornish red and takes a loud indelicate sip.

“What did I do this time, wife?” Robert asks, setting down the glass.  He gives no false endearments this time.  He sounds irritated.  Bored.

The queen folds her arms across her chest.

“You don’t know what it’s like to bid farewell to a child, Robert.  To never see your own flesh and blood again,” she spits, her words clipped and precise.  Her voice is louder  now.  Shakier.  She narrows her eyes and jabs an accusatory finger at him.  “You arranged all this with Dorne behind my back.  Without consulting me, your queen.  Without even asking _Myrcella_ , as though your daughter is nothing but a bargaining chip, like she’s nothing to you but chattel.  And as though your own wife’s beating heart is nothing to you at all.”

Robert rubs his face with his hands and shakes his head back and forth in exasperation.

“Lya,” he says on an exaggerated sigh.  “Look –“

The queen cuts him off.  “I will _never_ forgive you for this,” she says again, her voice filled with anger and tears and something else Gendry cannot quite recognize.  “Never.”  Lyanna sweeps out of the dining room without another word, her elaborate forest green skirts trailing behind her.

The servants in the Red Keep have long discussed the queen’s stony silences and infamous shouting matches with the king among themselves in hushed tones.  The Spider has occasionally mentioned whispers from smallfolk about her, indicating that some think her an angry, unstable queen.  Some lords in the lesser houses are bolder, telling Lord Varys outright that they think her an inappropriate woman.  A woman unfit to rule.

Whether or not his mother’s reputation is accurate or deserved, it’s true that her vitriolic dinnertime speeches were a regular fixture of Gendry’s childhood.  Though he is loath to admit it to himself, and would never admit it to anyone else, Gendry has learned to mostly ignore his mother’s tirades out of self-defense.

This time, however, Gendry feels his mother has the right of things.  As his father continues his ridiculous story of the giant she-boar that got away, as though nothing particularly notable had just happened, Gendry’s glass of Dornish red tastes like ash in his mouth.   He sets the glass down and feigns interest in his father’s tall tales.

* * *

Gendry likes to escort his uncle halfway home on nights he dines with them.  

As staunchly loyal as Renly is to House Baratheon and to the crown, he is also an irreverent and very funny man, wasting no opportunity to mock the king whenever his older brother is out of earshot.  Especially when he is in his cups, as he is tonight.  Gendry may be the king’s heir, but he always enjoys Renly’s japes at his father’s expense.  He lacks his uncle’s quick wit and sharp tongue but does his best to get in a few jabs of his own whenever the two of them are alone together.

And sometimes, in recent weeks, his uncle will also let slip a few details about his new kitchen girl.  

It’s happened twice.  The first time, Renly told Gendry in passing that the “thief girl,” as Renly called her, accepted his offer to join his household.  The second time was just to say the girl seemed a quick learner and was getting on well with the other servants.

If Gendry had more courage he’d ask about Arya every time he saw his uncle.  He’d ask if she seemed happy to be living in a fine house, with plenty of food and no shortage of firewood in the hearth.  He’d ask Renly if she seemed lonely in her new home or if she had found friends.  

If he were _very_ brave he might even ask if Arya ever mentioned him.  And if so, what she’d said.

But Gendry doesn’t dare raise the issue of Arya Waters on his own.  

To his credit, Renly has been mercifully uncurious about _why_ , exactly, his nephew wanted so desperately to pluck this particular bastard girl off the streets and move her into his household as quickly as possible.  Asking too many questions, now, about how Arya is settling in to her new home would likely earn him a battery of uncomfortable – if well-deserved – questions in return.

Questions to which Gendry still has no good answers.  Yes, the girl was in dire straits when he last saw her.  But so aren’t legions of other Flea Bottom wretches.  Why exactly _had_ it been so urgent that he intervene on this particular girl’s behalf?  Why was it so important to him that she be saved from the streets of Kings Landing?

Gendry lies awake for hours some nights trying to answer these questions.  But he is no closer to understanding it now than he was the night he begged his uncle to send Edric down to Flea Bottom to find her.

Whatever his reasons had been, tonight will likely shed no light on the situation.  Renly appears to be in the mood to discuss matters facing the Realm when they leave the dining room, much to Gendry’s disappointment.

“It’ll be good, this match with Dorne,” Renly opines quietly, his hands clasped tightly behind his back as he and Gendry walk together to the front doors of the Red Keep.  He gives Gendry a pointed look out of the corner of his eye, implying that tonight there will be no japes made about King Robert, nor information provided about fearless young bastard girls he shouldn’t be thinking about anyway.

“Yes, uncle,” Gendry agrees, hoping Renly cannot hear the lie in his tone.  “It will be a good match, it’s true.  Myrcella is a sweet, dutiful girl.  And this Trystane Martell is…” Gendry’s tongue suddenly sticks itself to the roof of his mouth, making it impossible for him to finish his sentence.

“Trystane Martell is a sweet, dutiful boy,” Renly finishes for him.  “A boy who will be good to your sister and loyal to the crown.  According to everyone.”

“Yes,” Gendry agrees.  He rubs at the back of his neck awkwardly.  “According to everyone.”

They walk together in silence for another very long moment after that, the only sound in the hall coming from their echoing footsteps against the worn stone path.  When at length they arrive at the front gates, Renly turns to his nephew.

“Here,” he tells Gendry without preamble.  He takes a small folded slip of parchment out of the pocket of his breeches and places it into Gendry’s right hand.  He closes Gendry’s hand around it, then gives his hand a gentle pat.  

“What is this?” Gendry asks, peering at his uncle, then his hand.

“It’s nothing, your grace.  A short note.  Read it later,” Renly instructs, his voice strange, waving his hands dismissively.  “And good night.  I’ll see you at my house for dinner in two night’s time, yes?”

“Yes, of course, uncle,” he agrees quickly, remembering, only now, the promise he’d made a fortnight ago to dine with his uncle later this week.  “Good night.”

His hand that holds the parchment grows warm as Gendry waves goodnight to his uncle.

* * *

When at last Gendry is alone – after his parents have both gone to bed, and his uncle has left for home – Gendry climbs into his four-poster bed and opens the note Renly gave him with exceeding caution.  As though the parchment might burn him if he rushed the act.

The message consists of only five handwritten words, the penmanship so poor they’re barely legible.   But Gendry reads the note over and over again to himself anyway, a slow smile spreading across his face as he does. 

_Thank you your grace._

_Arya_

Gendry lays Arya’s note on his bedside table as he chases sleep that night.  He wonders, idly, if he’ll ever see this girl again.  If perhaps he’ll see her in two nights.  And if he _does_ see her at Renly’s house, what in seven hells he’ll say to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the slight delay in this update. I *hope* to be able to update every other Sunday/Monday going forward, like I'd said in an earlier a/n. But now that the semester is here it might be a difficult goal to achieve. At least through mid-October, after which things will chill out for me considerably IRL. :)
> 
> Annnd, I promise more Gendrya interaction in upcoming chapters. :) Thank you so much for reading.


	5. The Third Meeting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I... can't quite believe how long it's been since I've updated this story. I never intended to abandon it but life kind of got in the way of inspiration for a while. If you're still here, and still reading, I can't thank you enough for your patience.
> 
> A special thank you to anidlebrain on tumblr for prereading sections of this chapter and for moral support.

“Oi! Arya!  Go fetch us more onions,” Hot Pie shouts impatiently.  He keeps most of his attention on the dough he’s been kneading for hours, pausing in his work only long enough to give the order.  “They won’t get into these pies by themselves, will they?”

Arya lets out a huff of annoyance.  It was one thing to live under Lommy’s thumb while she was on the streets of Flea Bottom.  She’d had no other choice if she wanted to survive winter.  But taking orders in Lord Renly Baratheon’s kitchen from a boy who’s just as lowborn as she is was about the last thing she expected when she insisted he be allowed to join her here. 

“I didn’t have to ask Lord Renly to take you in, you know,” Arya replies archly.  But she does as Hot Pie bids anyway, gathering up as many onions from Lord Renly’s large pantry as will fit in her apron and lugging them across the kitchen to where he works. 

Hot Pie looks about on the verge of thanking her for the onions when she returns, but she’s too irritated with him to give him the chance to do so.  Before he can get the words out she drops the onions unceremoniously in a pile at his feet.    

“I could have left you behind in Flea Bottom,” she adds.

Hot Pie gives her a smile, then – one of his great big earnest ones – and puts a flour-covered hand on his hip.  He leaves a large hand-shaped white print on his breeches in the process.  If he minds the mess he’s made of his clothes, or even notices, he shows no sign of it.

“But you wouldn’t have left me behind,” he points out, pointing a finger and smirking at her.  He chuckles a little as he stoops to pick up the onions from the floor.

Hot Pie’s right, of course.  Arya would never have repaid the kindness he showed her in Flea Bottom by abandoning him to Lommy’s cruel whims and Kings Landing’s cold winter streets.  And besides – most of the time he’s still good company.   

All the same, ever since his innate cooking abilities were discovered by the rest of Lord Renly’s staff, he’s been a smug, insufferable little shit during mealtimes.   Arya doesn’t dare give him the satisfaction he’d get by telling him he’s right, she wouldn’t have left him behind, because it would probably just make him worse. 

“How are the meat pies coming along?” Arya asks, eager to change the subject.  She glances at the counter where tonight’s dinner is being assembled.

“Oh – they’re good, they’re very good,” Hot Pie says happily, dropping even the pretense of modesty.  He rubs at a spot of flour on his forehead with the back of an arm, letting out a low breath.  “I ‘spect they’ll be good enough for the lot coming here tonight at any rate.”

“Who is it tonight, then?” Arya asks.  She plucks a knife from the large wooden block nearest to her and begins slicing onions, her earlier spat with Hot Pie forgotten in her eagerness to learn what news he might have of tonight’s guests.

“Dunno,” Hot Pie says, shrugging.  He hands off a great big ball of the dough he’s been kneading to another kitchen maid and sets to work on the next lump of dough in line.  “It’s a regular parade of guests here innit?  Lord Renly didn’t tell any of us who it is tonight.”

Hot Pie is not wrong about the number of guests they see here.  Lord Renly may not be quite the useless fop the girls in Toppance’s brothel said he was.  But the stories Arya had heard of Lord Renly’s love for grand dinner parties have proven true enough.  She’s worked in his kitchen for less than two moons’ turns, but she’s lost count of the number of people he’s entertained at his table in that short time.

“I ‘spect Ser Loras will be here,” Hot Pie says.  Doing his best, Arya can tell, to keep his voice even. 

Arya’s supposes Hot Pie is right about that one.  Ser Loras dines with Lord Renly more nights than not, and has been at every dinner party he’s hosted since Arya joined the household staff.  The rumor among the girls in the kitchen is that sometimes, after one or the both of them have had too much to drink, Ser Loras will lie with Lord Renly in the way men lie with women. 

(Arya has never heard of such a thing before, and would dismiss it as nothing but idle gossip if she herself had not seen Ser Loras emerge from Lord Renly’s bedchamber at dawn on more than one occasion.)

“Well, whoever’s coming,” Arya says, flushing a little at the inappropriate direction of her thoughts – after all, Lord Renly was extremely generous in inviting her to join his household; what business is it of hers who he takes to bed? – “we’ll make certain they have a good meal tonight.”   

“Aye,” Hot Pie agrees, pounding his fists into the dough in front of him.  “With me in the kitchen you can count on that.”

Rolling her eyes at her friend’s boasting, Arya grabs a dishrag and begins scrubbing at one of the pots dirtied in their work this afternoon.

* * *

 

Arya managed to survive the first sixteen years of her life relying on nothing and nobody but herself.  It’s a fact that has always given her no small amount of pride.

And so when Edric Storm found her in Flea Bottom two months ago it had gone against nearly everything she was to accept his master’s invitation.  She had gritted her teeth, stomped her feet, and screamed into her pillow for what felt like hours before she was finally ready to tell the patiently waiting Edric that, yes: she would accept Lord Renly’s offer.

But despite how reluctant Arya initially was to come here, by the end of her first day she could not deny that swallowing down her pride and accepting had been the right thing to do.

It was immediately clear that her new life would be a drastic improvement in her circumstances.  Lord Renly and his squire are not the only ones who sleep in quiet rooms with clean, soft sheets and cavernous hearths, full of burning wood to keep them warm at night.  No; every person who lives and works in this fine house sleeps on sheets so soft Arya would think they were made of spun silk if she didn’t know better.  Each person has his or her own warm, comfortable bed.  Her days of trying to hide Prince Gendry’s cloak under lumpy, too-small mattresses are apparently behind her forever.

Everyone here – from Edric Storm to Lord Renly’s lowest stable boy – wears clothes finer, and that fit better, than anything Arya had ever worn before arriving.  As it stands, the three bright, clean new shifts she was given her second day of work are by far the nicest clothes she’s ever had.

Even still, Arya remains uneasy.    

It’s not simply because she’s uncomfortable accepting anything resembling charity, although that’s certainly a good part of it.  But the bigger issue is the sheer opulence of Lord Renly Baratheon’s home.  Its grandeur is beyond anything Arya had even imagined possible two months ago, and although everyone here has been gentle with her she finds it nearly impossible to accept that this is where she now lives. 

Her master’s dining room furniture was wrought by hand from rare northron hardwood by an expert woodcarver in the Twins, Arya was told the afternoon she learned how to polish it.  His solar is adorned with gild-framed paintings the likes of which she has never seen, and cover the walls from floor to ceiling.  The handles of his everyday cutlery are encrusted with what she has recently learned are miniature sapphires.

Arya finds all of this unnerving for reasons that don’t fully make sense to her.  For this is certainly not her first exposure to wealth.  She saw highborn men every day of the week at Toppance’s establishment, often dressed in their finest as her former master escorted them behind the red curtain.  When these same men left an hour or so later, red in the face and sweating, they usually left behind a pile of silver stags as payment.  The more affluent, and generous, visitors occasionally paid with gold, or even jewels that the girls allowed Arya to admire from afar but which she did not know by name at the time. 

(It wasn’t until later, as she roamed Kings Landings’ mean streets with Lommy’s band that she learned to tell rubies from sapphires and diamonds from crude-cut glass.)

She supposes, however, that it is one thing to _see_ wealth – to see a shining gem on a girl’s nightstand; to palm a handful of stags during a hard night’s work on the streets – and an altogether different thing to _live_ with it all around you as she does now.   

Despite her improved situation Arya still wakes from fitful sleep more nights than not, her dreams strange and terrible.  Sometimes she’s again with the horrible man whose rough touches caused Toppance to send her to the streets.   More often, however, she dreams she’s shivering and hungry in Lommy’s camp again, her precious Needle and Prince Gendry’s cloak her only comforts. 

Her nightmares are so frequent, even now, that she is still not fully certain whether or not they are the reality, and whether all of this – going to bed every night with a full belly; her fine new clothes; her kind master – is nothing but an elaborate dream.

She was in this house for several weeks before she stopped pinching herself when she thought no one could see her do it, to see if pinching might wake her and plunge her back into the terror of her old life.  The pinching, of course, did nothing but leave painful red marks on her arms.  No matter how unbelievable her new life is she has grudgingly and slowly come to accept it’s all real. 

But she still doesn’t know if she will ever believe it in her heart.

* * *

 

Arya’s new daily routine – though more comfortable than it’s ever been – is by no means idle. 

Lord Renly’s dinner parties typically last until well past midnight.   There is no indication that tonight’s party will be any different.  Hermenia, the head cook, gathers the kitchen staff together once tonight’s guests have arrived, and Arya mentally prepares herself for what she knows will be many hours spent running back and forth between kitchen and dining room.

“All right, you lot,” Hermenia says to them, rubbing her large, chapped hands together before clapping them twice.  “We’ll start with the beet soup, yes?  Then the mutton.”  She hands delicate bowls of the chilled, blood-red soup to Arya and the three other girls who’ll be serving dinner to Lord Renly and his guests this evening. 

Arya takes the bowl from her and rushes from the kitchen on nimble feet.

“Go on then,” Arya can hear Hermenia saying to some of the slower girls once she’s halfway to the dining room.  In her mind’s eye she can practically see the older woman shooing them out of the kitchen with her hands, and she has to bite her lip to stifle a grin. 

The policy among the kitchen staff is not to linger too long among the dinner guests while serving them.  They are to go in, deliver the plates, and then leave again quickly.  This policy leads to faster service and minimizes disruption. 

Arya takes this policy very seriously, which means she seldom gets a good look at any of the many faces that come to Lord Renly’s table.  But tonight, the other girls take quite a long time to find their way to the dining room, given that soup, so easily spilled, is an unwieldy thing to serve.   Hermenia would not like it if Arya were to rush from the dining room just as the other girls are arriving.  It would be too disruptive to Lord Renly and his guests. 

The other girls’ slower pace holds Arya back a little, keeping her in the presence of Lord Renly’s company longer than usual.  It affords her enough time to look around and see who’s here and she takes the opportunity to do exactly that. 

She sees her master of course, sitting at his usual place at the head of the table and grinning broadly.  Ser Loras (here tonight without his wife) sits to Lord Renly’s left.  Two young ladies Arya does not recognize sit to Lord Renly’s right. 

And directly across from Lord Renly, in the chair reserved for guests of honor, sits his nephew, Gendry Baratheon. 

When Arya sees the prince – here, in her new home; sitting less than ten feet away from where she stands – her stomach fills with butterflies and her eyes go round as saucers. 

The day Arya accepted Lord Renly’s offer to join his staff she knew seeing the prince again someday was likely inevitable.  Gendry was his nephew, after all.  He was the one who’d asked his uncle to intervene on her behalf, which meant that perhaps he would eventually try to seek her out.  She’d even been so brazen as to write him a short note expressing her thanks for what he’d done for her.

Yet now that it’s finally happened, and she’s in the same room with him, she finds herself completely unprepared.

The prince is chatting with one of the young ladies at the table.  He does not appear to notice Arya as she weaves around the table and places Lord Renly’s soup in front of him.  For this, she is inexplicably grateful.

But as Arya makes her way out of the dining room she trips, just a little, on the edge of the fine carpet, accidentally letting out a small yelp as she rights herself.  And then all at once she can feel the prince’s brilliant blue eyes upon her.

The other serving girls eventually file into the room one by one.  Arya hardly notices them.  She chances another glance in the prince’s direction, and her breath catches in her throat.

Arya did not get a proper look at the prince that night, two moons’ turns ago, when she accosted him at knifepoint in the streets.  She thought she had, at the time.  But she hadn’t, really.  She realizes that now.  That night had been brutally cold and very dark.  Seeing him again after all this time makes her realize that in truth, most of her attention that night had been taken up by the frigid temperature; terror over what she had done to the heir to the Iron Throne; and then, in the end, relief, when she learned the prince had no plans to throw her into a dungeon.

But she can feel herself staring at him now.  _Really_ staring at him.  She knows she should avert her eyes.  That gaping at him like this is not appropriate.  She knows she should leave the room immediately and head back to the kitchen to await Hermenia’s next orders.

None of it matters, though.  She cannot make herself look away from him and her legs – usually so nimble, so quick – keep her rooted to the spot.

 _Gods be good, he is beautiful_ , she thinks, stunned, as her eyes take in his broad shoulders and the strong cut of his jaw.  She looks into his bright blue eyes and realizes, with a start, that he is staring at her just as openly and unabashedly as she’s staring at him.

He is the most beautiful thing she has ever seen. 

* * *

 

Arya catches odd bits of dinner conversation as she hurries in and out with the myriad courses that evening. 

After the soup course, Lord Renly talks for a while about Princess Myrcella’s wedding, to take place in a few moons’ turns.  He says the king is unhappy about the expense to the crown, which makes the guests laugh for some reason. 

During dessert, one of the young ladies murmurs something about one of her suitors to the woman seated next to her.

Arya hardly hears any of it.  The prince’s blue eyes are on her, _stay_ on her, follow her movements as she scuttles about the room with soup and vegetables and more wine and mutton, and she cannot think or focus on anything other than the heady warmth that rises up in her as he watches her.  She wonders, wildly, if the prince can feel the heat from her body across the room.  If he can see the rosy flush she knows must color her cheeks from his side of the table.

She doesn’t dare look directly at him again for the rest of the meal. 

* * *

 

It’s not until much later – after the other dinner guests have departed for home, and she is collecting the pale green linen napkins for the wash – that Arya speaks with him.

He catches her completely by surprise in the deserted dining room.  All five of her senses are very finely honed from her time spent with Lommy’s gang.  Normally she can hear a pin drop from the next room, and sees better than any hawk in the dark.  But tonight her thoughts are in such a tangle she doesn’t even hear his approach. 

Until he is suddenly there, right behind her.  He clears his throat to get her attention, startling her. 

When she turns and sees who it is, she drops her napkins.

“I’m… sorry for surprising you,” Gendry says, quietly, sounding more than a little embarrassed.  A guilty look crosses his face – like he knows he isn’t supposed to be here with her right now.  He bends down to pick up what she’s dropped.

“Your grace,” Arya says, wide-eyed, watching him collect the linen squares.  She’s beyond surprised that he’s apparently lingered to speak with her after everyone else has gone home.  More than that, she has no idea what in seven hells she’s supposed to _say_ to him _._ She tries to avert her eyes, to assume the deferential posture she knows is proper.  But his eyes are so startlingly blue in the midnight gloom, and the tentative smile he gives her is so warm and kind that she fails utterly to behave properly.  She looks directly at him instead, just as she had earlier in the evening.

He stands up awkwardly after he’s collected the napkins and hands them back to her.  Their hands touch for a brief moment as she takes them from him, and she shivers, despite the fire roaring in the hearth behind them. 

“I hope that you’re getting along here,” he says quietly.  He looks over her shoulder at some invisible point on the wall behind her, not meeting her eyes.  “Are the other girls treating you well?  And my uncle?”

Arya blinks a few times, confused.  When she’d imagined seeing the prince again she guessed he might offer an explanation for why he intervened on her behalf and got her this position.   She hadn’t guessed he’d be asking her these sorts of questions.  Was it not already obvious to him that her life here was immeasurably better than what it had been before? 

She recovers quickly from her surprise. 

“Oh, yes, your grace,” she answers hurriedly.  “Everyone has been… everything has been perfect.  Wonderful, really.”

“Good,” he says, nodding.  He still doesn’t look at her.  He clasps his hands behind his back and shifts his weight from one foot to the other, looking inexplicably nervous.

He chews his bottom lip, as though he wishes to say something else to her but cannot find the words. 

And then, almost before Arya even realizes it’s happening, the prince slowly, slowly leans across the narrow space that separates them and presses a gentle kiss to her cheek.  His lips linger on her skin very briefly, the feel of them hot and electric against her.

He pulls away a short moment later.  But the effect his touch has on her is akin to being burned up from the inside.  She feels drunk, and wild, and burning hot, and when she looks into his hooded blue eyes all she can think of is how desperately she wants to feel his lips on her again.

“Your… your grace…” Arya says, shocked and dizzy and full of questions she cannot put words to.  She doesn’t trust her voice, and so she trails off, shaking her head, dazed. 

“Good night, Arya,” the prince says, his voice husky and strange.  He gives a short, awkward little bow, and is gone.

 


	6. The Fourth Meeting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um... well, at least this time it didn't take me *nine* months to update? :-P I could give you a boring litany of excuses for why it took me so long to update -- *again.* But I'll spare you, as they're all variations on the usual theme. 
> 
> If you're still here, and still reading, I can't thank you enough for your patience and for bearing with me.

Gendry is no stranger to occasionally feigning interest at meetings of the King’s small council.

While he cares a great deal about the welfare of the people of the Realm he has a poor mind for details.  He understands, for example,that the crown must have sufficient gold in its coffers to carry out necessary business.  And so he’s able to focus at meetings long enough to know, generally speaking, whether the crown is presently solvent.  But his mind invariably wanders whenever the Master of Coin gets to discussing minutiae involving finances, and after the fact he can never quite remember whether the King’s advisors have decided to raise or to lower taxes; how much coin has recently come in through tariffs; or just what in the seven hells projected revenues for the coming year are supposed to be.

(Gendry is trying to get better at paying attention to the smaller details involved in ruling the Realm.  His father invariably tells him not to trouble himself with such things; that this, after all, is precisely what the King’s advisors are _for_.  But Gendry invariably ignores him.  He plans to be a very different sort of king.)

That said, never once in the eight years that Gendry has been attending small council meetings has he been as distracted as he is at this one, the morning after he impulsively kissed Arya Waters’ cheek in his uncle’s dining room.  That kiss was all he could think about last night as he tossed and turned in his bed.  The way her soft skin felt beneath his lips when he gently pressed them to her cheek.  How she’d looked when he pulled away from her – her cheeks flushed; her eyes wide; her lips slightly parted.  Like she’d just been kissed but couldn’t quite believe that she had. 

And above all else – strikingly, uncommonly beautiful.

That kiss is still all Gendry can think about, twelve hours after it happened, despite the fact that the small council is up in arms about… something.  He’s tired, he’s on pins and needles wondering what Arya must be thinking right now – and, in short, is simply not in the mood to be here.  This meeting cannot end soon enough for his liking.

“The Dornish refuse to help pay for the wedding,” Lord Varys says irritably, _and Gendry is in his uncle’s dining room again, sitting next to Margaery Tyrell, but ignoring her in favor of watching Arya move about the room…_

“Well.  There _must_ be ways of…” Renly says, clenching his fists, _and Gendry is approaching Arya in the dining room after everyone else has gone home, yearning to talk to her, to ask her how she’s faring in her new position here.  To take her small hand in his own._

“Well…” Varys begins, _and Gendry’s lips are on her cheek, and she smells of honey and lavender and_ Arya _, and all the nerve endings in his body are concentrated in the small part of him that touches her, and he never wants this moment to end…_

In the end, only Tywin Lannister’s voice is able to cut through Gendry’s reverie and bring him back to the present.

“Your Grace?”  the King’s Hand says sharply.

Gendry jumps a little in his chair.  Feeling sheepish, Gendry glances at Lord Tywin.  One of his severe eyebrows is raised at him in accusation.  It could not be clearer that he knows Gendry hasn’t been listening.  “And what, precisely, might your thoughts be on this matter, your Grace?”

Gendry blanches.  Out of the corner of his eye he sees his uncle do his best to hide a small smile in the palm of his hand.

“Um,” Gendry says, just like a young boy might say when caught daydreaming during lessons.  He thinks frantically for a long moment, trying to come up with a passable response to a question he hadn’t really heard.

He ultimately decides deflection is the best course of action. 

“I believe the king should be consulted before any decisions are made,” he says, as authoritatively as he can.  There.  No one should argue that point with him. 

“Oh?” Lord Tywin asks, looking highly amused.  “You think we should consult the king first?”

“Yes,” Gendry says, nodding.  His voice cracks a little on the word, making him cringe inwardly.    “Of course we should consult him first.  He is the king, after all, is he not?”

Lord Varys cuts in then, saving him.

“Very well, then,” the Spider says, sounding more than a little impatient.  He dips the tip of his feather quill into the ink well in front of him and jots down a few notes on his parchment. “The matter will be set aside until the king can be consulted.  Moving on to the next order of business…”

Gendry shakes his head a little, trying to clear it enough to focus on the matter of food rations in the North.  It won’t do to get caught daydreaming a second time in the span of a single hour.

* * *

 

As they’d arranged earlier this morning at breakfast, Myrcella seeks Gendry out at their old meeting spot in the gardens after the interminable small council meeting finally ends.

She wants to talk with him about the Martells’ – and her betrothed’s – imminent arrival at Kings’ Landing.  They are scheduled to arrive in less than a fortnight to meet with her family and discuss final preparations for the wedding, set to take place in Sunspear in less than three months.  Myrcella is understandably quite anxious about meeting them all in person for the first time and wants her older brother’s shoulder to lean on for a moment to calm her nerves.  Gendry was only too happy to oblige when she asked. 

As he sits and waits for her to arrive, Gendry cannot decide whether to discuss with Myrcella what happened last night after his uncle’s dinner party.  He suspects his sweet sister would listen without judgment were he to bring up his recent profound _lack_ of judgment.  And he’s desperate to tell someone about the thoughts that have raced through his head all night and all morning.  . 

But all thoughts of baring his soul to Myrcella fly right out of his head the moment she enters the gardens.

His sister is, for lack of a better word, glowing.  She lights up the gardens in a way Gendry has never once seen happen outside of those terrible romantic poems his Septa used to force him to study.  Her smile is the most radiant thing he’s seen in months.  Before Gendry’s even aware of it happening it pulls a matching smile from him. 

As she approaches him, Gendry sees that she clutches a small roll of parchment in both hands.  A new letter from Trystane, most like; it bears a Sunspear seal that’s looks to have been only recently broken.  If this letter were from any Martell but Trystane it would have gone straight to the small council or to the King – not to his sister.    

Gendry does not have to be a Citadel-trained maester to guess that the contents of this new letter are responsible for Myrcella’s beatific expression.

“What news, sweet sister?” he asks.  He’s still smiling, because she’s still smiling, and it makes him happy to see her so obviously happy.

Myrcella sighs dreamily by way of response and sits down beside him on the edge of the stone carp pool.  She gently places the rolled parchment beside her. 

And then she hugs her knees to her chest in a way Gendry has not seen her do since she was a very young girl.  The sight of her so clearly contented brings up feelings of indescribable warmth and tenderness within him.  He would do anything to protect his sister – and now, slowly, he’s beginning to realize that Trystane Martell will almost certainly do the same for her once they are wed.

In truth, it’s the best any brother could hope for.

“Gendry,” Myrcella eventually says.  To his surprise, her smile fades.  “I need your counsel on how to talk to Mother about… well...”  She trails off and shakes her head sadly.  She looks nervous.  “I need to speak with Mother about my situation, Gendry.  But I don’t know how to do that.”

She does not elaborate.  But there’s no real need.  Gendry thinks he understands her meaning well enough.

It is no secret that their mother remains as furious as ever with Robert for sending Myrcella, her only daughter, away from her.  And yet with every passing day it’s becoming clearer to Gendry that Myrcella is, in fact, very much looking forward to joining what will become her new family in Dorne.

“Mother wants you to be happy,” Gendry tells her honestly.  “She wants that for all of us.  More than anything in the world.   But she’s bereft that you’ll be leaving us so soon.  As aren’t we all,” he adds hastily.  “And yes, of course – she’s incredibly upset that, even now, you have no say whatsoever in all of this.” 

Myrcella nods and bites her lip.  “I guess I was upset about that as well.  At first.  But now…”  She trails off again and shakes her head.

Gendry puts a gentle hand on her back, hoping the gesture provides some comfort.

“Trystane’s letters are so earnest, Gendry,” she eventually continues.  She picks up the rolled parchment and holds it delicately in her hands.  “He’s so gentle.  So loving.  Gendry, Mother simply cannot relate to what I’m feeling right now.  No matter how much she projects her own situation onto mine.”

Gendry sighs, nodding in wordless agreement.

Myrcella stands, then, and begins pacing the gardens, wringing her hands anxiously.  “Father was – _is_ – a boorish man.  He smashed the Realm to pieces just to take back what was never truly his in the first place.”

Ordinarily Gendry would say something in response to this – something indicating that he agreed, fervently – but his sister is plainly distraught and looks as though she has more to say.  He wants to allow her the chance to say her piece uninterrupted.

“She didn’t want Father.  She didn’t then, she doesn’t now, she never will.  But I –“ Myrcella cuts herself off mid-sentence.  She bites her lip again and turns to look at her brother.

“I know, Myrcella,” he says, very quietly.  “I know.” 

Because he does.

“I think I’m in love with him,” she tells him, unnecessarily, on a breathless sigh.

Gendry stands up and takes Myrcella into his arms.  She buries her head into his shoulder and he rests his cheek on top of her head. 

 _When did my little sister grow so tall?_ he wonders wistfully.

“I know,” he says again.  “We’ll help Mother to understand.  Or we won’t.  Either way, I am so happy for you, dear sister.”

And he is.

* * *

 

Although he will not admit it to himself, and would deny it vehemently if accused, it is with a head full of romantic, foolish notions that Gendry pulls on his warmest woolen cloak and finds his way on foot to his uncle’s home that evening. 

There are matters of great import he must discuss with Renly as soon as possible, he tells himself firmly as he pulls up his collar against the stiff wind.  For one thing, there are all those very important details he missed during today’s meeting of the small council.  It simply won’t do for the heir to the Iron Throne to not have a full and thorough understanding of… whatever it was they discussed this morning.

What’s more, Gendry strongly suspects (though would never directly suggest) that Renly may have a quite thorough understanding of what it’s like to be in love with someone your family does not wish you to marry.  If his uncle is free this evening perhaps they could chat in strict confidence about this subject.  For his sister’s benefit, of course.   Myrcella, being a young lady, would likely not feel comfortable talking to Renly herself about any of this. But perhaps Renly could suggest a few things Gendry might say to her that would reassure the next time Myrcella seeks him out.  (Any such advice would, of course, be purely for Myrcella’s benefit, he tells himself.  He has no personal use for such information.)

A mad, foolish desire to see Arya again, tonight, right now, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with his impromptu visit to his uncle’s home.  If Gendry _happens_ to see Arya while he’s discussing important matters with Renly… well.  Then he supposes he’ll see her.  But the thought of Arya being the primary reason – in fact, the only _real_ reason – he’s outside on what might actually be the coldest night Kings’ Landing has suffered in living memory?  It’s laughable is what it is.

So laughable, in fact, that Gendry laughs out loud like a demented fool when he finally arrives at his uncle’s home.

* * *

 

Gendry’s laughter immediately dies in his throat, however, when Arya’s own loud, raucous laugh is the very first thing he hears once Edric Storm lets him inside.

The joyful, carefree sound of Arya laughing causes Gendry to stumble like a drunkard.  He braces himself against a nearby wall with one hand to keep from tumbling to the floor.

“Are you well, your Grace?” Edric asks in what sounds like genuine alarm.

“Um,” Gendry says.  He can still hear Arya laughing from somewhere else inside the house.  It sounds like a ringing bell.  “Yes.  Yes, Edric.  I’m fine.  Is… is my uncle at home?”

Edric shakes his head.  “No, your Grace,” he says regretfully. “He’s dining at the Tyrell’s this evening.”

“Oh.  I see.”

Edric clears his throat awkwardly.  His uncle’s squire has always been a rather nervous young man, in Gendry’s opinion.  And he is clearly nonplussed over Gendry’s unexpected appearance this evening.  Gendry feels guilty, suddenly, over having created this awkward situation. 

“Was Lord Renly expecting you tonight, your Grace?” Edric asks him dubiously.  “Because this dinner has been on Lord Renly’s social calendar for a fortnight.”

Gendry coughs into his hand, casting wildly about for a plausible answer to Edric’s question that won’t make him seem a complete buffoon. 

“Well… no.  No, I don’t believe Renly was expecting me.  Not as such.  I suppose I just thought I should – or, rather, that I _could_ – ”

Gendry is saved from having to fabricate a reason for being here when two of his uncle’s servants suddenly burst into the entryway, carrying a suitcase in each hand and laughing.

“Arya!” the older of the two women calls out, apparently oblivious to Gendry’s presence.  “Hurry up, will you?”

“I’m coming!” Arya’s voice rings out from the other room.  “These suitcases don’t lift themselves though do they?  And they’re bloody heavy!”

Her protests only cause the servants in the entryway to laugh harder. 

“What’s going on?” Gendry asks, grateful that he finally has something relevant to say.

Edric Storm opens his mouth to answer him.  But before he can explain, the two women turn in unison to face him, clearly just noticing him for the first time.  The younger of the two shrieks in horror at the unexpected sight of the prince in her master’s home.  She drops the bulky parcels she carries and gives a hasty curtsey.

“Your Grace,” she says quickly, words tumbling over each other in their haste to leave her mouth.  “I beg your pardon, we didn’t know –‘

“We didn’t _see_ you standing there against the wall, your Grace,” says the other servant, apologetically, interrupting her friend, as she too hurries to bend the knee.

Arya bounds into the entryway a moment later. Her hair is in wild disarray, her cheeks are flushed, and her gray eyes are wide, wild, and brimming with excitement.

Gendry’s heart catches in his throat at the sight of her.  He wonders if he’s ever seen a more beautiful young woman in his life than Arya is in this moment. 

He also wonders what in the bloody hell he’s going to _say_ to her once she looks up and realizes he’s here.  

“Okay, you lot,” Arya says, still laughing. “I’m ready to go, and– _oh_!”  Her words cut off immediately when she sees Gendry, hands clasped awkwardly behind his back.  Her eyes, and mouth, go round as saucers.

He smiles at her.  Or tries to, anyway.  It feels rather more like a grimace than anything else.

Arya gives him a smile in response – a genuine smile, one that reaches her eyes – seemingly on impulse, before she catches herself doing it.  A moment later she schools her features and stumbles a little as she bends the knee before him.     

“Your Grace,” she says, her voice steady, showing no sign of nervousness.

“Please – no need for all this,” Gendry says, gesturing to the women meaningfully.  His voice shakes a little, and he curses himself for being a fool and a green boy and an idiot for coming here tonight in the first place.  “I came here unannounced.  You had no reason to expect me.”  He clears with as much authority as he can muster.  “Please stand up, ladies.”

Slowly, awkwardly, the two servants Gendry does not recognize stand, not certain what exactly to make of the situation.  They collect their dropped parcels one by one, mumbling things to one another that he cannot quite make out.

“What’s going on here?” Gendry asks again.  “You owe me no explanation, of course.  I’m only curious.”  He chuckles a little.  “You see, I’m not used to such commotion in my uncle’s home when he’s not in the middle of it.”

One of the servants begins to laugh at his small joke before she can stop herself.  She tries to mask it as a cough in her hand a moment later.

“We’re moving households, your Grace,” Arya tells him.  His eyes snap back to hers.  Her cheeks still retain their flush but she holds his gaze confidently.  The right side of her mouth quirks up into a half-smile.  To his horror, Gendry finds he cannot tear his eyes away from her lips as she does it. 

“Oh?” he asks, feigning disinterest.  For he is anything but disinterested.  Arya’s moving households?  What does this mean, exactly?  Where precisely is she moving _to_?

“And where are you moving to?” he asks, trying to keep his voice even.  

“Why, to the Red Keep, your Grace,” Arya says.  And now, at last, it’s her voice that’s shaking.  “Surely you knew about this, though?  Lord Renly said you yourself agreed just this morning that the King would take on part of his household to prepare for Dornish visitors.” 

“Ah,” Gendry says, casting his eyes about the room nervously.  He has no memory whatsoever of agreeing to any such thing.  But he was in such a distracted state this morning he could very well have agreed to housing dragons for the next fortnight and he wouldn’t remember it.  He nods in a way that he hopes looks knowing, praying to the seven that he hasn’t gone pale at this shocking new piece of information, and that he can keep his hands from shaking visibly for just another few minutes.  “Yes, that’s right.  I… I suppose I did.”

“Is that why you’ve come this evening, your Grace?” Arya continues, tilting her head a little to one side.  She’s looking directly at him, her gaze so steady and piercing it’s like she’s looking right through him, rather than at him.  “To accompany us to the Red Keep?”

Gendry swallows audibly.  He looks at the two women standing to his left, clearly confused as to why he’s here.  He looks at Edric Storm, who wears the same look of perpetual puzzlement he always wears.

And then he looks back to Arya, who hasn’t taken her eyes off him since she entered the room. 

With all the courage he possesses Gendry, at last, gives her a genuine smile.

“Yes,” he lies, grateful that Arya’s provided him an excuse for being here.  It’s a terrible excuse, of course.  Why in the seven hells would the heir to the Iron Throne take it upon himself to personally escort three servants from one house to another?  But in light of the fact that Renly is not at home and was not expecting him to be here it’s better than any excuse Gendry can think of.   “In fact, that’s precisely why I’m here.  Can I… that is to say… will you allow me to accompany you to my home, ladies?”

Arya nods, in wordless affirmation, apparently speaking for all three women.  And then gives him a look filled with so much trust, so much genuine affection, that it takes all of his self-restraint not to press her up against a wall in front of all of these people and kiss her senseless.

It takes him a long minute to recover the ability to speak.

“Right,” he eventually says, his voice hoarse and strange to his own ears.  He nods at Edric.  At the servants he does not know.  And, finally, at Arya.  He extends his arm to her.  “Let’s go, then.”


	7. Interlude (Part 1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's either no updates for months or two updates in a week, apparently. ;) I hope you enjoy.

Arya glares at the book lying open on the table in front of her as though its words are being indecipherable on purpose just to spite her.  She squints at them and bites her lip, willing the letters to rearrange themselves into something, _anything_ , she can actually read.

But it doesn’t work.

“This is hopeless,” she mutters darkly, scooting her chair back a few inches from the table in frustration.  She digs her nails into her palms and tries to resist the urge to slam shut the thick book the prince chose for today’s lesson. 

“No.  It’s _not_ hopeless,” Gendry insists.  She looks up at him, convinced he’s about to start laughing at her – like she’s been expecting him to ever since she told him her secret.   But he doesn’t look like he’s about to start laughing.  He’s looking at her with the same patient expression he’s worn every time they’ve met like this.   “It’s only been three nights, Arya.  And you’re making great progress.”

“I’m not,” she insists, sticking out her bottom lip and folding her arms across her chest petulantly.  “You’re lying.  You’ll always read much better than I ever will and you know it.”

Gendry rubs at the back of his neck as color creeps up his cheeks.  He looks away from her, at an invisible spot on the floor, as though her accusation embarrasses him.  All at once she feels guilty about having said anything about it.

“Arya, I’ve… well.  I’ve had more opportunity to practice my letters than you have,” he admits.  “But it doesn’t matter.  You’re getting quite good.  In fact, I specifically chose a difficult book tonight because you’re doing so well. If you were a hopeless case we’d still be reading those children’s books.”  He chuckles a little.  “Or I’d have stopped meeting with you altogether.”

Mollified a little, Arya takes in a deep breath.  Slowly lets it out. 

She supposes that last bit must be true.  Why would the prince take the time to meet with her if she were a truly hopeless case?  He wouldn’t.  Surely he has plenty of other things he could be doing after his dinner than teaching his uncle’s serving girl how to read.

“All right,” Arya eventually says, studying her fingernails.  “Fine.  Maybe I’m not quite hopeless.”

“Start again, Arya,” he suggests.  She glances up and sees he’s looking at her again.  His expression is different now from what it had been earlier.  She can’t quite place it.  But the intensity of his bright blue eyes on her fills her stomach with butterflies all the same.

The prince jabs his finger at the section in the middle of the page.  “From this line right here.  Go on.”

Arya steels her nerves and bends her head to the book.

“The Tar…. Tar…. garyen ar…mies…” she begins.  The words taste foreign and strange.  But she can still feel the prince’s bright blue eyes upon her as acutely as any physical touch, and she doesn’t dare give up now.

* * *

 

The other girls at Toppance’s place always used to tell Arya that she was smart.  As a rule that lot was never overly generous with their compliments, and so Arya never doubted they were telling it true.  At least insofar as they saw things.

Shortly after Arya’s fourteenth name day she decided that a smart girl – no matter how lowborn – should be able to teach herself to read if she tried hard enough.  Being smart was one thing and was useful as far as it went.  But a girl who was smart _and_ knew her letters?  It could make all the difference for her someday.

During her last year at Toppance’s – and then again, later, at Lord Renly’s comfortable home – Arya tried to spend any odd bits of spare time she might have teaching herself as much as she could.   

To her great frustration, though, learning to read proved tricky work.  

Not for lack of exposure to reading material.  Toppance always had books and things like that lying about for his more learned customers.  And Lord Renly’s fine library had more books in it than Arya could ever hope to count in a lifetime, let alone read.

Her difficulties were not due to lack of effort, either.  Some nights Arya would stare at the words in Toppance’s books until her eyes crossed, or until one of the other girls gently tapped her on the shoulder and suggested she go to bed.  One morning Magda even found her fast asleep in Toppance’s front room, still hunched over the book she’d been up half the night trying to decipher. 

No: Arya’s primary problem before coming to the Red Keep had been in finding a person both willing and able to help her make sense of the strange written scribbles that still look like gibberish to her more often than not.  Toppance’s other girls were always either too busy or too illiterate to help her.  Lord Renly’s women are much the same.

Smart she might be, but at age sixteen Arya still has only the most rudimentary grasp of the written word.  The brief note she wrote Prince Gendry several moons past, thanking him for securing her a position at his uncle’s home, had taken her the better part of an hour to write, the quill clutched in her white-knuckled hand like a lifeline.  When she finished the note, she looked at it proudly for another twenty minutes before folding it neatly in half and slipping it under Edric Storm’s chamber door like they’d arranged.

(As she reads with the prince tonight, Arya wonders whether he kept that note.  It’s the only thing she’s ever written down on parchment.)

* * *

 

Her nightly reading lessons with Prince Gendry began unexpectedly.

Not that any of their encounters have ever followed a predictable path. 

The small bag Arya brought with her when she moved to the Red Keep three nights ago had been stuffed to overflowing with most of her few meager possessions.  It contained the three black-on-gold shifts she wears as a member of Lord Renly’s household staff; a few trinkets that were once her mother’s; and the cloak the prince gave her years ago on his eighteenth name day.

No matter how hard she tried cramming it inside, however, the small book Edric Storm gave her when he saw she had an interest in reading simply would not fit.  On their slow, shivering walk from Lord Renly’s home to the Red Keep Arya’d had no choice but to carry it.  She tucked it carefully under her cloak (the cloak Lord Renly gave her; the one she does not need to hide) so could still keep her hands stuffed deep inside its warm pockets.

When they’d made it halfway to the Red Keep the prince – who walked alongside her while the others hurried on ahead, eager to be out of the frigid night air – frowned at the parcel under arm.  “What’s that you’re carrying?” he asked her, nodding in its direction.

Arya flushed a little. _Does the prince miss nothing?_  She hoped the chilly night air masked the evidence of her embarrassment.

“I could tell you,” she said, slowly.  “But you’ll think it’s stupid.”

He smiled at her.  “I doubt that.”

Arya sighed a little and rolled her eyes.  “It’s a book, your Grace.  I’m trying to teach myself to read,” she admitted quietly.  She averted her eyes.  “It’s ridiculous, I know.   And pointless too.  A bastard serving girl learning her letters?”  She gave a humorless laugh.  “But I suppose I just… I just want to be able to read.”  She shrugged her shoulders, then glanced up at him and shook her head.  “It’s stupid.  You think it’s stupid.”

The prince’s smile faded.  A shadow passed over his face and his eyes softened.

For a long, insane moment, Arya was reminded irresistibly of the previous night, when the prince gently pressed his lips to her cheek in Lord Renly’s dining room.  She wondered if he was thinking of trying it again, right here on the open streets of Kings’ Landing.  She wondered what she’d do, this time, if he did.

He didn’t, though.  “I don’t think it’s stupid,” he said instead, so quietly his voice was nearly swallowed up entirely by the loud crunch of nearby hoof beats on snow.  “I think it’s brave.”

* * *

 

By the time they arrived at the Red Keep they had set their first reading lesson for the following evening.  It would need to be after his dinner with his family was finished and after her chores for the day were completed.  It was the only way they’d both be able to sneak away undetected.

“It’s settled, then,” the prince said, his eyes twinkling, just before Arya was about to give him her leave for the night.  “I will see you tomorrow evening.”

He smiled kindly at her and slowly – so slowly – closed the distance between them and kissed her cheek, still flushed and chapped from the time spent outside in the frigid night.  Her eyes fluttered shut at the contact, and she willed the moment to continue on forever.

But he pulled away from her far too soon. “Good night, Arya,” he whispered into her ear.  She shivered a little as his warm sweet breath tickled the wisps of hair at the nape of her neck.  “Sleep well.”

* * *

 

After their allotted time together is over for the evening, Gendry gently closes the book on Westerosi history they’d been reading from.  He pushes back from his chair a little and rubs a hand over his face.

“Thank you, your Grace,” Arya says earnestly. 

His hand drops to his lap and he smiles at her.  “For what?”

She rolls her eyes at him – partially because it always makes him laugh when she does it, but also because he’s being stupid.  “For meeting with me tonight, of course.”

None of the other girls know she meets with the prince for reading lessons.  Because they can’t.  If they had any idea how much time she’s been spending with him, alone, since she arrived they would be both furious at her for shirking her work responsibilities and horrified that she was endangering herself in this way. 

After fourteen years in a brothel Arya knows exactly what the staff here would say to her if they found out about this arrangement.  They’d tell her that even if the prince was acting nice and gentlemanly now, it was only a matter of time before he’d expect her to spread her legs for him.  And then before she knew it he’d get a bastard on her that he’d never claim, leaving her with another mouth to feed.

But the truth is, Gendry hasn’t laid a finger on her during their meetings.  He’s never so much as taken her hand in his.  He’s certainly never tried kissing her again, much to her disappointment.

(Sometimes, just out of the corner of her eye, Arya _will_ notice the prince watching her as she reads.  When he does it his mouth usually hangs slightly open, and his eyes will go wide with something Arya almost thinks looks rather akin to wonder, though she doubts that men truly look upon women like that in real life.  Either way, whenever Arya looks at him directly his eyes skitter away from her immediately.)

Arya stands from her chair and stretches her arms over her head.  After spending an entire day scrubbing Princess Myrcella’s clothes, and an evening spent hunched over a table reading, her shoulders are quite tender and sore.

She yawns, and she can’t help but notice that the prince’s eyes dart down to her parted lips as she does it.

“Does anyone else know we meet like this, your Grace?” she asks.

His eyebrows shoot up in surprise at the question.  “Why do you ask?”

Arya shrugs.  “Just curious,” she says.  “None of the other girls here know I meet with you.  I was just wondering if… if your family knew.”

Gendry takes a deep breath and lets it out before answering.

“I think so,” he says very slowly, looking sheepish.  “Actually… I don’t think so.  I know my family knows.”

Arya nods.

“And what do they say?” 

The prince shrugs his shoulders and looks away.

When she realizes he doesn’t mean to answer her Arya puts her hands on her hips impatiently.  “A shoulder shrug’s not an answer, your Grace,” Arya presses.  She knows she’s being terribly bold with the prince right now.  But after three nights spent in his company she feels bold.  “Go on, now.  Tell me.  What do they say?”

The prince sighs.

“My father thinks it’s _wonderful_ that I’m meeting with one of the serving girls every night,” he says.  But there’s no joy in his voice as he says it – only spite, which confuses her.  “As for my mother – well.”  Gendry trails off without finishing his thought and rubs awkwardly at the back of his neck. 

“Your mother what?” Arya prompts.

He bites his lip and hesitates.  “My mother is rarely happy, Arya,” is all he says.  It isn’t a real answer to her question but the look on his face as he says it tells her she’s pried enough for one night. 

“Well, I haven’t told anyone, your Grace,” Arya says again.  “It wouldn’t do to have them knowing I’m getting special favors from the prince.”

He nods at her words.  “I see,” he says after a long pause.   He nods again.  “Yes, of course.  That makes perfect sense.”  But he looks sad.

The truth is, Arya doesn’t know how long they’ll be able to continue meeting like this.  The Dornish prince and his family are due to arrive at Kings’ Landing in less than one week.  She’s cutting corners on her work responsibilities in order to meet with the prince, but she knows she won’t be able to do that for much longer.  

The thought of not being able to spend time with this kind, gentle man every night fills her with a foolish sort of dread to which she knows she has no right. 

“But it doesn’t matter to me that I need to keep it secret,” she tells him honestly.  “The important thing is that I’m learning to read.”  _And that I’m spending time with you_.

The prince closes his eyes and sighs.  He pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.

“You’re not like anyone I’ve met before, Arya,” the prince murmurs.  “I just wish… things could be different.”

He doesn’t elaborate.  But he doesn’t need to.

“Will I see you again tomorrow, Arya?” he asks, his voice full of so much hope it breaks her heart.

She nods.

“For as long as I can manage it, your Grace, I will meet you every night, right here.”  She smiles at him again.  “I swear it.”


	8. Interlude (Part 2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you are still here, and reading this story, I cannot thank you enough for your patience. I can't promise I'll ever be able to get it on anything resembling a regular update schedule (my job makes writing anything but tiny little ficlets pretty difficult for me these days) but I *can* promise you I will eventually finish this story. Almost certainly before GRRM finishes TWoW. ;)

The first time Gendry kisses her – really, properly kisses her – it takes them both by surprise.

* * *

 

It happens after her fifth reading lesson.  

Arya has just finished the first chapter of the Westerosi history book Gendry set for her when they started meeting.  It’s a dry book, full of esoteric details of the earliest years of the Targaryen Empire.  Even though Arya hardly knew her letters at all when she arrived at the Red Keep she’s managed to work her way through this first chapter in less than a week’s time. 

Gendry could not be prouder of what she’s accomplished.  And he tells her as much. 

“It’s a wonderful achievement, Arya.”  He smiles at her.  “You should be proud.”    

“Thank you, your Grace.”  Her face is flushed with something that looks rather like embarrassment.  But she smiles at his words all the same, clearly just as proud of herself as she should be.  

Arya closes the book and bids him goodnight.  When she begins packing up her things to leave, however, Gendry is suddenly struck by an irresistible impulse to keep her with him just a little while longer. 

Before he can think better of doing it he reaches out and takes her small hand in his. 

She freezes, already half out of her chair, at the contact. 

Gendry clears his throat and forces his dry mouth to form the words before he loses his nerve.  “Walk with me through the indoor gardens tonight?” he asks, his words tumbling over each other in a hurried rush.  He hopes his voice isn’t shaking too badly, though he suspects it is. 

She sits back down and turns to face him, eyes wide.  She blinks at him in confusion but does not let go of his hand.  “What?”

“We should celebrate how far you’ve come with your letters,” he explains hastily.  “Our gardens are… well.  Our gardens are very beautiful.”  He averts his eyes in a feeble attempt to hide his excitement.  “The rooms are very warm, even in winter.  And quite fragrant.  And… well, I’d like to show them to you.  If you think you would enjoy that.”

Arya does not say anything for a very long moment.  Eventually, however, she nods her agreement.  Gendry lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.  “I would,” she says, very quietly.  “Enjoy that, I mean.”

He smiles at her in delight, his stomach awash in butterflies.  “Wonderful,” he says.  He decides to ignore, for the moment, the small voice in his head telling him this is a terrible idea.

 

* * *

 

To Gendry’s relief the Red Keep’s indoor gardens are empty when they arrive.  Save, of course, for the strange little songbirds that choose to spend their winters here rather than fly to points farther south. 

And it is during his leisurely, solitary walk with Arya – while they admire the scenery together; and he admires her beautiful profile; and as Arya marvels at the flowers that manage to bloom here, even in the dead of winter – that everything between them changes.

“The Martells will be here soon, your Grace,” she says abruptly, as they approach the far wall of the gardens and the logical end of their walk together.

Her words abruptly jar him from the pleasant mood he’s been in these past hours in her company.  He stops walking. 

“Yes,” he says, very slowly.  “I already know that.”  Why is she telling him this?  She says it like it’s news to him.  As though it is not something he has been dreading since the very moment of his sister’s betrothal to a young stranger. 

Arya nods, her expression unreadable.  She stares resolutely at the ground in front of her, her gaze so intense it’s as though she believes the packed dirt beneath her feet holds secrets meant only for her eyes. “I only mention it, your Grace, because you need to know my responsibilities in the kitchen are increasing by the day.  And it’s… well, it’s just getting more and more difficult for me to sneak away for even a quarter of an hour.” 

“Arya,” he says, trying to keep the rising panic he feels out of his voice.  “What are you telling me?”

She looks up at him, her eyes glistening with unshed tears.  “No matter how badly I might want to, I just don’t see how we can keep meeting every night.”

At her words, something inside him that, until now, he’s managed to keep under tight control snaps in two.  The thought of his no longer being able to see Arya every night – of not being able to look into her eyes from across their narrow little table; to talk to her; to teach her to read and to share with her their little private jokes – fills Gendry with such a hot, horrible sort of dread he has to close his eyes and grit his teeth against it.

And the next moment, before Gendry even fully registers what he’s doing, he has Arya Water’s back pressed up against the pale stone wall of the gardens.  Her small hands are trembling, and then suddenly tangled in his hair, and his own hands clutch at her waist as their lips come together at last to move in a slow, delicious tandem. 

If Gendry were capable of rational thought he might think it a bad omen that he is kissing her in the same gardens his father built for a woman who would never love him.  But, by the gods, he is kissing Arya at last, and in the moment there is room for nothing else.  One of Arya’s hands runs gently through close-cropped hairs at the nape of his neck, sending lightning bolts of sensation rocketing down his spine.  And the quiet little whimpering sounds she makes as he tentatively traces her bottom lip with his tongue are nearly enough, all on their own, to end him right there.

How many times has he imagined kissing this girl?  Hundreds of times, certainly.  Possibly thousands.  Images of her face, just inches from his own, swim before his closed eyelids most nights as he chases sleep, alone, in his bed.  The thought of how her mouth might feel pressed up against his own as their tongues and lips roam and explore has been enough to bring him to full hardness on more occasions than he can accurately count.  

But every fantasy he has ever had of this moment pales in comparison to the reality of it.  To the feel of the real Arya Waters in his arms as her hands paw and clutch at him, and to the way her sweet, perfectly-shaped lips taste on his tongue. 

 _What happens now_? he wonders dazedly, like all of this must be happening in some sort of lurid daydream, as she stands on her tiptoes to pull him closer.  But then she boldly, deliberately deepens the kiss, and he whimpers helplessly into her mouth, and he knows that it doesn’t bloody _matter_ what happens next so long as she stays with him.  Always.

“Don’t leave me,” he pleads with her between kisses.  His voice is much rougher than he wants it to be, but she’s still kissing him even as he says the words, running her dexterous fingers through his hair, and he just can’t help himself.  “Please, Arya.”

It’s not a promise she can make.  He knows that.  It’s unfair of him to even ask.  But now that he knows the feel of her in his arms, knows how incredible it is to have her small strong arms around him, he doesn’t know how he can possibly bear even a single day without it.

An impossible, unfair demand it might be.  Regardless, Arya throws her arms around his neck all the same and presses a line of bold, needy kisses down the column of his throat by way of wordless response.

“I won’t leave you,” she whispers fiercely against the sensitive skin of his throat as she moves, making him shiver.  “Not ever.” 


End file.
